3 ms·

Even better, a technical argument: http://habitatchronicles.com/2017/05/what-are-capabilities/ http://habitatchronicles.com/2017/05/what-are-capabilities/

SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
Did you link the wrong essay? That one is about Capabilities and access control, not real name policies.
- zrm 6y ago
  I think I get it. The idea is that you assign capabilities based on whatever authentication mechanism. Access to read email sent to this email address, access to withdraw money from this bank account, etc. The way a lot of people think about this is that a set of permissions is associated with a person with a Real Name and then a person with a Real Name is associated with an account or some other context. But the middle step is irrelevant from a technical perspective. Your name isn't a secret and can't reasonably be used for any kind of authentication. It's effectively an alphabetic account number. Using the same Name for all of your accounts is only useful if you want to give companies the ability to correlate them all, which is often the opposite of what you want. If you take it out you're left with a set of capabilities associated with an authentication context, which works just as well from a technical perspective and doesn't have that problem.
  - 3np 6y ago
    Yup. Or, worded differently: you do not need authentication to achieve authorization. So many people conflate the two.
- myWindoonn 6y ago
  As sibling says, they are deeply linked. "The capability paradigm is about access control. When a system, such as an OS or a website, is presented with a request for a service it provides, it needs to decide if it should actually do what the requestor is asking for. The way it decides is what we’re talking about when we talk about access control. If you’re like most people, the first thing you’re likely to think of is to ask the requestor “who are you?” The fundamental insight of the capabilities paradigm is to recognize that this question is the first step on the road to perdition." "That’s highly counterintuitive to most people, hence the related controversy."

SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago

Did you link the wrong essay? That one is about Capabilities and access control, not real name policies.

zrm 6y ago
I think I get it. The idea is that you assign capabilities based on whatever authentication mechanism. Access to read email sent to this email address, access to withdraw money from this bank account, etc. The way a lot of people think about this is that a set of permissions is associated with a person with a Real Name and then a person with a Real Name is associated with an account or some other context. But the middle step is irrelevant from a technical perspective. Your name isn't a secret and can't reasonably be used for any kind of authentication. It's effectively an alphabetic account number. Using the same Name for all of your accounts is only useful if you want to give companies the ability to correlate them all, which is often the opposite of what you want. If you take it out you're left with a set of capabilities associated with an authentication context, which works just as well from a technical perspective and doesn't have that problem.
- 3np 6y ago
  Yup. Or, worded differently: you do not need authentication to achieve authorization. So many people conflate the two.
myWindoonn 6y ago
As sibling says, they are deeply linked. "The capability paradigm is about access control. When a system, such as an OS or a website, is presented with a request for a service it provides, it needs to decide if it should actually do what the requestor is asking for. The way it decides is what we’re talking about when we talk about access control. If you’re like most people, the first thing you’re likely to think of is to ask the requestor “who are you?” The fundamental insight of the capabilities paradigm is to recognize that this question is the first step on the road to perdition." "That’s highly counterintuitive to most people, hence the related controversy."