Re: [saag] Liking Linkability

On 2012-10-18 21:29, Ben Laurie wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 8:20 PM, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:

>> from any person that was not able to access the resources. But you would
>> be linkable by your friends. I think you want both. Linkability by those
>> authorized, unlinkability for those unauthorized. Hence linkability is not
>> just a negative.
> 
> I really feel like I am beating a dead horse at this point, but
> perhaps you'll eventually admit it. Your public key links you. Access
> control on the rest of the information is irrelevant. Indeed, access
> control on the public key is irrelevant, since you must reveal it when
> you use the client cert. Incidentally, to observers as well as the
> server you connect to.
> 

That's undeniable.

I'm still curious about the use-cases for non-linkable authentication.
The Austrian government spent a lot of money and time on creating sector-
specific IDs but I doubt they actually work in practice.  Without any
kind of "call-back" info, what kind of service can you actually get?

There's probably more utility in systems vouching for non-personal attributes
like "Employee of Acme", "I'm over 18", etc.  Yes, InformationCards was a
good idea!  It was just poorly though-out since it didn't exploit the
platform that already existed in the wild: consumer PKI.

Anders

Received on Sunday, 21 October 2012 07:31:07 UTC