Brown draft feedback on time stamping and on criticality flags

I have a copy of the Brown Draft dated 18 June 1999, which I hope is pretty
much the latest.

It seems to be always easy to find whatever I'm looking for in this draft!

Regarding criticality flags in the attributes, I seem to recall there being
a fair bit of aversion at and around the initial workshop on whether we
should have criticality flags.  The persons who expressed this opinion
seemed to have a great deal of experience with prior security protocols.
What were the problems, and have they been overcome?  Since the criticality
flags are either still included or have returned (I don't know which), I
assume there was a resolution.  What was it?

Regarding time/date stamping, it follows some ISO standard I don't have
(URL?), but that standard doesn't seem to include information on whether or
not the signer uses daylight savings time.  (Not that the verifier should
trust signer time settings).  Perhaps UTC time is different from GMT, but
whenever we go on daylight savings time here on the Pacific Coast, our
offset changes from 0800 to 0700 relative to GMT.  Does the same thing
happen with UTC?  If so, it could make things a fair bit easier for
programmers (very many of whom don't know about this little hiccup) to
produce the correct local time.

Thanks,
John Boyer
Software Development Manager
UWI.Com -- The Internet Forms Company

Received on Wednesday, 28 July 1999 14:02:34 UTC