As I see it, there are a number of issues that need to be cleared up before certs are anything more than snake-oil. Unfortunately, the economics of the current

As I see it, there are a number of issues that need to be cleared up before certs are anything more than snake-oil. Unfortunately, the economics of the current market-reality fight (tooth and nail) against doing so. (Note that I'm limiting this to browser certificate handling.) - We need clients to authenticate servers as well as the reverse. - Browsers need to allow better user control over certificates. I know the reasons why this isn't provided, and I don't care. Add a "reset to defaults" if you're worried about people breaking their browsers, but a sensible way for users to control whom they trust is important. See next point. - As of now, we have a pile of registries with near-zero public view into the operations of people with whom we're literally entrusting our bank accounts. Some of these are overtly in the control of nation-states, and many more are assumed to be at least covertly "assisting". Those of us with a problem with that (which should be everyone - even if you trust your friendly neighborhood intelligence agency, what about all the others?) need much better visibility into the operations of the CAs. I'd argue that they shouldn't even be for-profit operations, but that's not a huge point to me - the important points are knowing which ones are incompetent or compromised by their masters (which are the same thing in once sense, not not in others), and there are various paths to get there. To the browser apologists: is a balkanized web worse than one that cannot be trusted? And are your actions actively harming people by making them believe it is trustworthy when it is not?