In other words, Paul, are you sure you're not calling for an ashcroft?
completely. i have met the enemy, and i have also met the potential enemy,
and i know that recipient privacy is nowhere on anybody's mind. consider
what would happen if the ITU ever finished its debate about e164.arpa and
there a few hundred million voip-reachable phones (either IP to the station
or IP to the central office and analog to the station). all it would take
a telemarketer is a simple NAPTR/SRV sweep, with SYN-probe, to build a list
of tens of millions of reachable endpoints. ten racks of linux PC's later,
we'd all be getting round the clock robotic calls from some telespamketer
with some viagra to sell.
i need ibcs to make it possible to keep doing what i used to do in e-mail,
but more importantly i need the "ashcroft" you speak of in order to gain
confidence about SIP callers, or instant messenger or SMS senders. right
now the security people call this "the PKI problem" and calling it that is
exactly what makes it unsolvable. i sweartagod the next time i meet an
ivorytowermathtype who wants to tell me how hard something is, i'm just
going to <do something unsavory>. We Know How To Do This! not only that,
but We Know What The Market Demands!
note that brokered anonymity will still be possible. knowing someone's
identity means knowing that they are somebody in particular, and not
necessarily knowing their meatspace-corredpondance identity. i'd be one
of many people who would set my acceptance-filters to allow e-mail
traffic based on transitive recourse toward a well-heeled trust broker
(who has much to lose if their clients misbehave), even if i might not
accept an e-commerce transaction from someone who didn't want me to know
their name and address in meatspace.
Personally I'm equally convinced of the validity of both Paul's and the
view above. I'm not convinced either is all or even most of the truth.
i have faith in human nature. if you build a world wide communications
system to make communications easier, It Will Be Used. by the full
spectrum of humanity. anybody who wants 10000:1 odds against this should
just gimme yer money right now, because it's not even a fair bet.
--
Paul Vixie