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Read through your link, and here's just an observation - > BrowserID is a decentralized identity system BrowserID effectively links identity an email service

Read through your link, and here's just an observation - > BrowserID is a decentralized identity system BrowserID effectively links identity an email service provider, and while I realize that not everyone shares their emails with Google, a vast majority of people still does. That's not that much of decentralization, is it? Practically speaking. (edit) Added practically speaking... and ease up on that downvoting, distinguished HN comrades. Non-natural post scores hurt my feelings.

JoshTriplett 15y ago
"decentralization" doesn't mean "forced decentralization". Anyone can register a domain name and have their own email at that domain, so anyone can create an identity. And ignoring the transitional bits in BrowserID, eventually that identity gets controlled entirely by the public/private keys in the user's browser. Or, in other words: if you don't trust Google, don't use gmail; that someone else chooses to do so doesn't make this system less secure for you.
- huhtenberg 15y ago
  Sure, I understand that of course. I am just saying that practically speaking this property is not going to matter much in the world where everyone and their dog is on GMail. It is certainly nice to have though.
  - bct 15y ago
    A system that assumes that everyone is on GMail will tend to ensure that everyone is on GMail, whether or not that's a good thing. Decentralization leaves the possibility of that situation changing open. That matters. (Or, less philosophically: there was a time that everyone and their dog were on Internet Explorer. I think we're all glad that we didn't close the door to browsers other than IE.)
  - nl 15y ago
    The last numbers I saw put Gmail at under 10% of email account marketshare. Hotmail and Yahoo both had much bigger shares. It's difficult to imagine an authentication system that doesn't have some kind of centralized mechanism for making sure identities aren't duplicated. In this case, delegating that to a combination of two existing technologies (DNS for the domain, then email for the username) that are open, well understood and easy to implement seems appropriate. What's the alternative? Using some kind of pseudo-GUID and then maybe a derivative of the Paxos distributed consensus algorithm to decide if it is to be trusted? I'd imagine there would be a good number of PhDs in that approach before a system like that would be close to being ready for actual implementation. This system seems just about as decentralized as is practical. If you disagree I'd be very happy to hear alternatives.
    - JoshTriplett 15y ago
      You can have fully decentralized identities quite trivially: just create a public/private key. No consensus algorithms required. With browsers now supporting synchronization features to connect the browsers on all systems used by a single user, such a system could actually work quite well now, without the usability issues it would once have had.
      - nl 15y ago
        This is a variety of SPKI[1], right? I was thinking of a conventional PKI approach, with an adapted web of trust to verify identities [2]. You are right - theoretically this could work. But it would pretty much take a "boil the ocean" approach to make it work. Browsers would need to implement a secure (private) keystore, and presumably some way to sync that to other browsers. A whole new standardized authentication flow would need to be created, which wouldn't be the same as the existing certificate-based authentication (which no one uses anyway) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_public_key_infrastructure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_public_key_infrastructur... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure#Web_of_Trust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure#Web_o...
        15y ago
icebraining 15y ago
Uh, GMail users are a minority. Besides, the system is decentralized - the fact that most people can choose the same server is not a problem of the system. Besides, the fact is that most websites already use email, so BrowserID is not any worse than the status quo.

JoshTriplett 15y ago

"decentralization" doesn't mean "forced decentralization". Anyone can register a domain name and have their own email at that domain, so anyone can create an identity. And ignoring the transitional bits in BrowserID, eventually that identity gets controlled entirely by the public/private keys in the user's browser. Or, in other words: if you don't trust Google, don't use gmail; that someone else chooses to do so doesn't make this system less secure for you.

huhtenberg 15y ago
Sure, I understand that of course. I am just saying that practically speaking this property is not going to matter much in the world where everyone and their dog is on GMail. It is certainly nice to have though.
- bct 15y ago
  A system that assumes that everyone is on GMail will tend to ensure that everyone is on GMail, whether or not that's a good thing. Decentralization leaves the possibility of that situation changing open. That matters. (Or, less philosophically: there was a time that everyone and their dog were on Internet Explorer. I think we're all glad that we didn't close the door to browsers other than IE.)
- nl 15y ago
  The last numbers I saw put Gmail at under 10% of email account marketshare. Hotmail and Yahoo both had much bigger shares. It's difficult to imagine an authentication system that doesn't have some kind of centralized mechanism for making sure identities aren't duplicated. In this case, delegating that to a combination of two existing technologies (DNS for the domain, then email for the username) that are open, well understood and easy to implement seems appropriate. What's the alternative? Using some kind of pseudo-GUID and then maybe a derivative of the Paxos distributed consensus algorithm to decide if it is to be trusted? I'd imagine there would be a good number of PhDs in that approach before a system like that would be close to being ready for actual implementation. This system seems just about as decentralized as is practical. If you disagree I'd be very happy to hear alternatives.
  - JoshTriplett 15y ago
    You can have fully decentralized identities quite trivially: just create a public/private key. No consensus algorithms required. With browsers now supporting synchronization features to connect the browsers on all systems used by a single user, such a system could actually work quite well now, without the usability issues it would once have had.
    - nl 15y ago
      This is a variety of SPKI[1], right? I was thinking of a conventional PKI approach, with an adapted web of trust to verify identities [2]. You are right - theoretically this could work. But it would pretty much take a "boil the ocean" approach to make it work. Browsers would need to implement a secure (private) keystore, and presumably some way to sync that to other browsers. A whole new standardized authentication flow would need to be created, which wouldn't be the same as the existing certificate-based authentication (which no one uses anyway) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_public_key_infrastructure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_public_key_infrastructur... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure#Web_of_Trust http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_infrastructure#Web_o...
      - 15y ago

icebraining 15y ago

Uh, GMail users are a minority. Besides, the system is decentralized - the fact that most people can choose the same server is not a problem of the system. Besides, the fact is that most websites already use email, so BrowserID is not any worse than the status quo.