>From: jueneman <jueneman%wotan(_at_)com(_dot_)gte>
>Subject: Re: Re: Re: Naming and other hard problems
>Date: Fri, 07 Jan 94 12:57:00 EST
>I'm not sure that I understand your second point. Looking at the effort
undertaken
>by Mitre with the sponsorship of NIST, I would say that we are heading in
basically
>the right direction. The IPRA might or might not go away and be replaced by
some
>other Top Level Certification Authority, but I think the PCA structure will
probably
>stand up. In fact, the notion of a PCA and a PCA policy was one of the most
important
>contributions coming from the PEM effort, vs. the X.509 structure.
I assume its now legitimate to talk publicly about the MITRE work.
The MITRE PKI study was scoped to address the public trust
infrastructure required for conducting US official business. The word
public here is confusing; it refers to people and organizations as
juridical persons (constitutional, civil and military) who are transacting
business with the US government, be it by existing messaging
and trust infrastructures, or those which offer digital and automation
benefits to existing processes. Most of the early applications are
anticipated to exploit organization messaging technology for the
release and transport of official and commercial documents. The
timescales laid down for the execution of the system are staggeringly
close; with the expected consequence that for the most part existing
juridical, commercial, naming, processing infrastructure will be
exploited, enhanced only where necessary by appropriate secured
directory, messaging, certification and cryptographic technology. Such
technology will be used to automate existing services which have known
legal significance.
PEM and other research efforts are looking at much broader set of needs
and operational theatres; concerned with inter-personal individual
messaging. PEM looks at the enviornment of National (and
inter-national) service provision, a new area for which new mechanisms
and structures are required. The Mitre team, and the groups of opinions
who they consulted, studied a subset of options for US Federal policy
only.
Lets not confuse the aims of the two programmes; however do let the
conduct of this list support those of use who argue that, based on the
Internet, whilst the US government is about sorting out its own house,
it might sponsor the creation of a truely public policy (involving all
the usual constitutional processes) addressing inter-personal secure
individual messaging in the US domain. Where the US federal government
leads, other national entities will follow.