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

[Karp, Alan H]

Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> 
> The only reason to speak of "who" in a system is when we are trying to
> attribute actions to stakeholders. Unfortunately, actions are not
> performed by stakeholders. Actions are performed by programs. While a
> program may run as a consequence of some command or action that I (the
> human who is logged in) initiate, it does not follow that the program
> acts in accordance with my intent, and it is (generally) absurd to
> imagine that I (the human who is logged in) have any meaningful degree
> of control over the actions of that program.
> 
Still, if Alice runs a program written by Bob, she must assume
responsibility for its actions because she granted (a subset of) her
authority to it.  If Carol is harmed by Alice's use of Bob's program,
Carol's only recourse is to hold Alice responsible.  After all, Carol
may never have heard of Bob or his program.  Alice's recourse is to
recover any penalty from Bob.  It may be unfortunate, but that's the
best we can do.

_________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Virus Safe Computing Initiative
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories 
1501 Page Mill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304
(650) 857-3967, fax (650) 857-7029
https://ecardfile.com/id/Alan_Karp
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp/
  
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