[cap-talk] "Who" seen as thorny (was: Defense of Identities, etc.)

[Jed at Webstart]

At 10:01 AM 12/7/2006, Karp, Alan H wrote:
>Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
>
> > Which brings me back to my earlier statement that defining what
> > constitutes a "who" is a very thorny problem.
>
>Indeed it is.  In the e-speak product "who" was defined by knowledge of
>a private key.  In Client Utility, "who" was defined by a Protection
>Domain.

Is there more to this "who" (identity) issue that I'm missing.  It seems
to me that private keys can work on a network.  Is the issue you're
focusing on defining "who" in a pure capability sense?  Or perhaps
you're still considering the binding of an identity (e.g. a private key)
to something more meaningful like a person or some sort of trust
relation.  I believe this later is well understood and not particularly
challenging, except perhaps conceptually.

--Jed http://www.webstart.com/jed/