[cap-talk] "ambient authority" on wiki.erights.org

[Karp, Alan H]

I don't think any of the definitions I've seen so far capture what to me is the essential nature of ambient authority, the separation of designation from authorization.  I think the following captures that point.

"A system in which the submitter of a request does not specify which permissions to apply to the request is said to use ambient authorities."

I'm not sure if "does not" should be "need not" or "must not."

________________________
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
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Alan_Karp