RE: A $25,000,000,000 PKI Was:Spec. on QC-low-fat & QC-heavy-bio

[Alan Lloyd <Alan.Lloyd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I love this stuff - reality at last.

As said - PKI and certs is a theoretical function applied to operational
systems based on cost/trust/risk parameters.

They (PKIUs and certs - and their validation) can be simple and cheap to
deal with traveller kiosks, phone cards, freeway tolls - (ie. processed
within a business policy (using directory services))   in fact their
utility here is greater than barcoding people, getting retina scans, the
name of ones cat and getting this signed off as being genuine by the
chair of the UN and 20 lawers just so they get a key pair and then
making them sign mail with this.



On a more serious note - and as said trying to profile certs/PKIs  for
"the Internet" - when the Internet technologies will be used in many,
many  ways for many reasons is a hard task. Not complying to PXIX may be
the norm for most certificate usage, particularly if there are 1bn phone
users and millions of tagged cars around the place.

Anders - about this money stuff - can we talk percentages?

regards alan


And then there is the cost issue.  This is CHEAP, mass-produced stuff.

Imagine a PKI that 2005 has 1 billion users (projected mobile phone
deployment)
where each user pays $25 to have his/hers CyberID.  That is

    $25,000,000,000 / Year !!!!

VeriSign, Thawte, are you listening?

It is absolutely worth HUGE sums to create secure servers and even
"adjust" laws on
digital signatures.  Maybe BBN could be interested in the server
business? :-)

Anders Rundgren
Senior Internet e-commerce Architect

http://www.mobilephones-tng.com