Tony Hain writes:
Are there other reasons for having authenticated, time-stamped email? I
am sure there are many, but the first I would like to see is the end to
the designation that a fax is acceptable legal evidence, while email is
not. Will an 'anti-spam' focused IETF wg provide that? Maybe by
accident, but not likely. Will an 'authenticated email' wg produce an
end to spam? Not initially, but like the lock, the result is a
technology that enables the social management sphere to accomplish the
greater goal.
I, like you, suspect that authenticated email may
be helpful in the spam wars, but this must not be
viewed in isolation. "Authentication" begs the
question of identity, trust in assertion,
ownership of identity, and the motivation and
foibles of third parties who would likely be
needed to scale this to anything that would be
useful.
In particular, the latter is almost without
exception a "be careful for what you wish for"
situation. Centralization of power for naming and
thus participation would be a very convenient tool
to exclude undesirables. Today that's spammers,
but where are the checks and balances? What
prevents less worthy causes? How do you prevent an
unreasonable accrual of power made real by virtue
of being the path of least resistance for the
great unwashed masses?
Unless these issues -- and many more -- can be
finessed, the cure might be worse than the
disease.
Mike