- From: Bill dehOra <Wdehora@cromwellmedia.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2000 15:19:41 -0000
- To: "'Greg FitzPatrick'" <gf@medianet.org>, Marja-Riitta Koivunen <marja@w3.org>, Dan Brickley <Daniel.Brickley@bristol.ac.uk>, Guha <guha@epinions-inc.com>
- Cc: www-rdf-interest <www-rdf-interest@w3.org>
:You :as represented by a trusted 3rd party agent : meeting your legal obligations as a citizen/member of something : exposing yourself to law enforcement (contentious) :as represented by a trusted 3rd party agent : in buying and selling goods and ideas. : in transactions notarized by 3rd party agents : maintaining tax revenues (by consent :(hopefully)) :as represented by a trusted 3rd party agent : in communicating with : family : friends : strangers : interest groups : employers : doctors & lawyers : etc. : :whereas each possible communicator has varying access to you But they don't have varying access to *me*. They have varying access to layers of software that surrogate *for* me (that why it's called an agent), assuming no layer has not been coopted. That is very different. Each added level of indirection is a security risk. :As a shopper it is in your advantage to let the seller know as :much about yourself as possible. That's debatable in scenarios involving commodities, and highly debatable where the consumer has a clear picture of what they want, or where bargaining is possible. It might be relevant for the sale of customised services. :You would be more willing to give this :information if you were assured that your :identity was never to be divulged and :you would be more secure in your privacy :knowing that your agent and not the seller :was allowed privy to your true identity. How might we be 'assured' of security in such matters? Consequentially how can we be assured of anonymity in such transactions? While it may be inconvenient that people's data is dislocated, is limits damage to them in the event of identity theft. The idea that centralised digital identities are resources that are not going to be abused or cracked is frankly naive, and I cannot imagine an assurance sufficient in this scenario, unless security is built in from the very beginning, which is certainly not the case with rdf or the semantic web. -Bill
Received on Tuesday, 7 March 2000 10:20:18 UTC