[cap-talk] Authority is always potential

[David Hopwood]

Mike Samuel wrote:
> On 19/09/2007, Jed Donnelley <jed at nersc.gov> wrote:
>
>> Can we please stick to referring to the 'potential' authority
>> of the executing program as its 'authority' (e.g. much as we
>> do with a person) and use some other term or terms to express
>> constraints on the program's behavior that may arise from the
>> coding of the program?
>
> If you're already reasoning about programs statically, then maybe talk
> about "reachable" authority.

The concept of 'potential' authority is a fundamental one, and the term
used for it should be concise. We have been using just "authority" for
this concept, and I don't see any strong argument to change.

Note that authority in this sense does take account of the behaviour
of relied-on subjects, and does not take account of the behaviour of
non-relied-on subjects. It is therefore relative to a specification of
which subjects are relied on. This is a feature, not a bug.

-- 
David Hopwood <david.hopwood at industrial-designers.co.uk>