3 ms·

The issue is identity not phone numbers. Most (all?) protocols conflate the two. But the real world doesn’t speak in phone numbers, ip addresses, and private k

The issue is identity not phone numbers. Most (all?) protocols conflate the two. But the real world doesn’t speak in phone numbers, ip addresses, and private keys.

nine_k 3y ago
This is immaterial here. If your loved one is in a hospital unconscious, it's a random doctor or a police officer who is going to contact you. Group identities could help though. Let through emails and calls that are signed by a "official medical use" key, or "official federal police use" key. The public keys for those should be publicly available and easily verifiable. User-level PKI is hard, and trust is shaky. Few well-known signature keys should be much easier. The infrastructure could, of course, be used for whatever other keys you choose to track and trust, e.g. your employer's org, your kid's school, etc. The problem of responsible stewardship remains, but is likely solvable in serious organizations with a dedicated IT department, like a hospital, or a police force.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago
  Humans currently speak a different language than our technology. You're moving closer to a human solution by mapping unstable identifiers (private keys, signatures) to human identifiers. At the core, humans want to say "ignore everything that isn't from a friend or family member, unless it's an emergency" Expressing that with technology is hard, especially when people try to solve for identity with technology. Identity is a social construct, it lives outside of cryptographic proof. The systems we build do very little to try and map cryptographic proof back outside the system to identity. School clubs, hospitals, governments, family, names, friends, etc. are all social constructs. Some social constructs are stronger than others (hospitals and governments have a lot of steps involved in making the social construct!) but they're all still social constructs. Identity is fiat. There is no way around it. Spoon boy says it best: > Do not try to bend the spoon. That is impossible. > Instead, only try to realize the truth. > There is no spoon. > Then you'll see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself

The issue is identity not phone numbers. Most (all?) protocols conflate the two. But the real world doesn’t speak in phone numbers, ip addresses, and private keys.

nine_k 3y ago

This is immaterial here. If your loved one is in a hospital unconscious, it's a random doctor or a police officer who is going to contact you. Group identities could help though. Let through emails and calls that are signed by a "official medical use" key, or "official federal police use" key. The public keys for those should be publicly available and easily verifiable. User-level PKI is hard, and trust is shaky. Few well-known signature keys should be much easier. The infrastructure could, of course, be used for whatever other keys you choose to track and trust, e.g. your employer's org, your kid's school, etc. The problem of responsible stewardship remains, but is likely solvable in serious organizations with a dedicated IT department, like a hospital, or a police force.

r3trohack3r 3y ago
Humans currently speak a different language than our technology. You're moving closer to a human solution by mapping unstable identifiers (private keys, signatures) to human identifiers. At the core, humans want to say "ignore everything that isn't from a friend or family member, unless it's an emergency" Expressing that with technology is hard, especially when people try to solve for identity with technology. Identity is a social construct, it lives outside of cryptographic proof. The systems we build do very little to try and map cryptographic proof back outside the system to identity. School clubs, hospitals, governments, family, names, friends, etc. are all social constructs. Some social constructs are stronger than others (hospitals and governments have a lot of steps involved in making the social construct!) but they're all still social constructs. Identity is fiat. There is no way around it. Spoon boy says it best: > Do not try to bend the spoon. That is impossible. > Instead, only try to realize the truth. > There is no spoon. > Then you'll see it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself