Hal Finney wrote:
I am a bit uncomfortable with the notarization signature in general.
We have it in the draft but have no experience with it in reality,
which is kind of the opposite of the usual IETF procedure. I guess it
was somebody's bright idea that got stuck in, in case people might want
to use it someday.
The fact that we may have to add further rules clarifying how to use it
just emphasizes our lack of experience with the construct. Often with
these things you don't find the problems until you actually try to use it
for something and interoperate with others. Given that notary signatures
have been in the draft in some form or other for years without seeing
any use that I know of, should we consider taking them out?
I think as long as the semantics - the legal
or otherwise meaning - of the digsig are left
explicitly vague and up to the signing and
relying parties, then the existance of a notary
signature form just represents a spot where
two cooperating parties could agree to do a
notary-like signature. It's up to them all to
sort out the details...
Looking at the section 5.2.1. Signature Types
There is this odd para half way through the
list:
Please note that the vagueness of these certification claims is
not a flaw, but a feature of the system. Because OpenPGP places
final authority for validity upon the receiver of a
certification, it may be that one authority's casual
certification might be more rigorous than some other authority's
positive certification. These classifications allow a
certification authority to issue fine-grained claims.
I suggest that this is out of place and may be
better served being moved to the front or back
of the section, so that it serves as a general
caveat of vagueness and user-authority on the
issue of signature semantics.
I would prefer the disclaimer to vaguery to be
at the beginning because that's how lawyers like
it. So, Something like this:
5.2.1. Signature Types
There are a number of possible meanings for a signature, which
may be indicated in a signature type octet in any given signature.
Please note that the vagueness of these meanings is
not a flaw, but a feature of the system. Because OpenPGP places
final authority for validity upon the receiver of a
signature, it may be that one signer's casual
act might be more rigorous than some other authority's
positive act.
These meanings are:
0x01:...
iang
PS: The concept of technology doing signatures is
quite scary, and notary signatures are a step
further into that area; this group has no real
tools to deal with it as we have no lawyers
here, and even if we did, we'd need to cover
different codes (common, civil, islamic...)
and different digsig laws. Before this ever
gets to be a tech question, it's a major academic
challenge. The people who looked at basic digsigs
in the mid 90s bungled it comprehensively, so it's
not as if we can even say "well, just pay someone..."
It's the sort of thing that might fit much more
nicely in another document. "Notary Signatures
Extension to OpenPGP." But as you say, I'd prefer
to see someone *do it* in code and in practice to
flush out the lessons.