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Re: Engineering to deal with the social problem of spam

2003-06-07 21:20:20
From: Paul Vixie <vixie(_at_)vix(_dot_)com>

...
So how about turning down the heat a little and being more technically
specific about your replacement for the Internet?  ..

here's the problem.  if we had end-to-end personal certificates that were
widely deployed and universally presented, it would become reasonable to
try to wire an smtp listener to reject all but certified traffic -- but
since pornospammers could and would acquire signed certificates, we'd
have to do some kind of pgp-like kevinbacon-like "degrees of separation"
logic to find out about trust.

it turns out both of those are missing.  and creating them is a bigger
problem than rewiring smtp would be.  and that once they exist they will
have equal applicability to IM/ICQ/SIP/etc.

as usual, i would be happiest if someone else would take this on: i'm Busy.
however, that's not why i don't write a detailed proposal.  my goal at the
moment is to discover whether the ietf possesses a "collective will" and
if so, whether it is "willing" to take on this much larger problem.  so far
the answer seems to be not just "no" but "hell no!"

Imagine if you will (since it's true), that I don't have any real idea
what you're talking about.  I understand only that you think that PKI
is hopelessly broken (golly gee, what a surprise) and that something
else easy and obvious (to you but not me) is The Solution.  Assume
(since it's also true) that I've lost track of the number of times
someone has announced Third/Forth/Fifth Generation Computing, Artificial
Intelligence, True Artificial Intelligence, For Sure This Time Really
True Artifical Intelligence, the Solution to the Von Neumann Bottleneck,
Real Computer Security, Really Real Computer and Network Security,
The Solution To Spam, and any and everthing else.  Many of those
announcements came from bright and sincere people who were only
overstating their points.

All I can see is the truth of your point that pornospammers could and
would acquire signed certificates, that each of us have a single digit
kevinbacon-like separation from any pornospammers, and that most of
us are closer to some pornospammer than to someone else we'd like to
hear from.

What do you expect me to do?  I won't answer your draft notice
"hell no I won't go!" but I'm not going to enlist until I have a
glimmer of where you're sailing and what's under the decks.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com



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