> Try explaining to a non-technical person how to bootstrap their trust system. It can be automated. There are many examples now of headless networks- Bitcoin,

> Try explaining to a non-technical person how to bootstrap their trust system. It can be automated. There are many examples now of headless networks- Bitcoin, Bittorrent, etc. A browser could connect to such a network, and when connecting to a server, could verify how many signatures from other parties have signed the certificate from that server. Then, this information could be cached, as long as the public key stayed the same. The process would have to be renewed for any new domain connected to via HTTPS, though. From an administration standpoint, the domain holder would just have to request that a certain number of existing entities sign their cert. Maybe they could pay them a nominal fee to cover the admin task. Admittedly, it took me years to come around to understanding this stuff (which is, essentially, public-private key encryption and digital signatures, and where "trust" comes from, and reading about PGP/GPG) to enough of a degree that the existing system started to not make much sense to me. I believe Namecoin (http://namecoin.info/ http://namecoin.info/) tried to solve this problem using Bitcoin blockchain tech, but they appear to be WAY before their time. Using their tech, I believe that both domain name management as well as certificate generation and signing could be automated.