Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-pkix-sim-00.txt

[lynn.wheeler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

and of course the (FSTC) FAST model has some authoritative agency/authority
(for the information) .... authenticating the information in a transaction
that (can) looks very much like an existing online payment authorization
transaction (aka the end-user makes some signed assertion to a RP ... and
the RP gets the real-time agreement back directly from the authoritative
agency). This somewhat makes the distinction between a certification
authority (as TTP) and an authoritative agency; where there can be
contractual and liability relationship between the RP and the agency
certifying (& responsible for) the information.

There are (at least) three issues

1) certificates originally targeted as solution for offline certified
information in an offline environment ... attempting to find a reason in an
online world

2) x.509 identity certificates creating a value proposition .... for a time
somewhat attempting to aggregate more & more privacy information ...
exasperating the identity theft and privacy leakage problems. one reaction
was institutions going to relying-party-only certificates that contained
just an account number .... which were attached to signed messages &
transactions that contained the same exact account number and transmitted
to business process that contained the account record and already contained
a copy of the public key for authenticating the transaction (trivially
showing that certificate itself was redundant and superfluous). The
existence of such certificates were technical artificial contrivance having
nothing to do with any business process.

3) the traditional online business model has had bilateral
agreements/contracts a) between the authoritative agency (like a financial
institution) and the end-user, b) the end-user and the relying party and c)
the relying party and the authoritative agency. Many of the certification
authority constructs were introduced as TTPs that would certify information
nominal the responsibility of some authoritative agency .... supposedly
because the relying-party might not have an online conduit to the
authoritative agency. However, the CA typically had no direct
contract/business relationship with either the authoritative agency or the
relying party .... any contract (implied or real) was between the end-user
and the certification authority (which could be totally unrelated to any of
the three bilateral agreements already mentioned).  I think that the GSA
has addressed this by making the CAs agents of the GSA and the RPs having
contractual relationship with the GSA (with regard to the GSA agents).

the certificate challenge then is 1) role in online world, 2) contain
useful information w/o leaking useful information, 3) some correspondence
to normal accepted business relationships (especially in a TTP scenario
where the TTP is independent of the actual authoritative agencies for the
information and all existing business relationships).

Some of the adult oriented internet has been using $1 auth for sort-of a
real-time age checking transactions. You do a something that looks like
MOTO payment transaction with a RP ... the RP does a $1 auth through the
normal network but doesn't do settlement (so nothing ever shows on your
statement). The result of the $1 auth is saved and used as implying that
you are of legal age (aka there is legal relationship between you and the
financial institution acting as an authoritative agenchy, there is legal
relationship between the RP and the financial infrastructure ... and you
are directly interacting with the RP). While there are some issues with
regard does the existance of legal relationship between you and your
financial institution actually implying legal age ... as well as the lack
of a digital signature (or other form of strong authentication) actualy
mean that you are you (say a x9.59 digitally signed transaction) ... the
control flow and the business relationships follow normal accepted
practices.