Re: Verifiable Claims privacy/technology issues

On 07/27/2017 07:14 PM, Jeffrey Burdges wrote:
> I'm not up to speed on the current proposals, or exchange

Hey Jeff, as you know, it's difficult to provide helpful input if you're
not up to speed on the current state of the WG. Please don't make
guesses wrt. what we're currently doing/exploring.

As we've discussed in person before, the group cares deeply about
privacy and confidentiality. We also care about deploying solutions that
the market will adopt. There is a tension between those two things at
times and we're trying to walk that line as best we can.

Which is why when you say stuff like this:

> To do this sort of thing ethically

... it makes it difficult to hear you out. It implies that if the WG
does anything other than what you assert, it will be acting unethically.
So, there are two options (again, based on your line of argumentation):
1) Do what you say, or 2) shut down the WG. Since you've made it clear
that we can't do #1, then we must do #2.

I'm sure this isn't what you meant to convey, but that's what's coming
across when you comment based on the approach that you are.

It would be more helpful if you describe the attack you're concerned
about more narrowly so we can discuss mitigations.

> Just the nonces, and even hash of the message, in most signature 
> schemes already wreck any sort of privacy.

Yes, we know.

> the specification should mandate specific named secure privacy 
> preserving scheme

We wish such a technology existed in a standardized form today. We're
working with folks like Jan Camenisch (CL-Signatures) to try to
standardize such a privacy preserving scheme.

> that verifies the whole certificate chain in zero-knowledge, and 
> requires that issuers get entirely new certificates.
> 
> After that, you must somehow magically ask the CA to be able to 
> attest for the validity of a "claim" where nobody but the claim 
> holder can even know who the issuer is. Good luck with selling that!

That is one approach; it is not the only one. We're exploring multiple
approaches in parallel that have the qualities you describe. What would
be more helpful is if you were to identify the most promising of these
so that the group could focus on the ones you think have the most merit.

> As I've said previous, doing "claims" correctly remains an area for 
> cryptographic research that is not likely to be ready for 
> standardization anytime soon.  I mentioned a couple recent examples 
> of claims done well here : 
> https://github.com/w3c/verifiable-claims/issues/1

Yes, the group is aware of that work. Is there anything there
specifically you'd like us to standardize?

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Rebalancing How the Web is Built
http://manu.sporny.org/2016/rebalancing/

Received on Friday, 28 July 2017 13:41:34 UTC