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

[Rob Meijer]

On Fri, June 12, 2009 00:11, Karp, Alan H wrote:
> 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."

Although I feel this definition captures most of what I would consider
ambient authority, I feel the focus is not quite placed right by focusing
on the wielding of authority rather than on through what the authority was
obtained, what I feel would be the essence of the difference with
designated authority.  The point that the thing wielding the authority
derives this authority from a source (like class type or uid) that is a
non private but yet unalienatable implicit part of its construction.

Lets go back to in my view the simplest example of ambient authority, the
class in a class based OO language with static access to some shared
object.

According to my view on ambient authority, given that the static object
reference was implicitly made part of the authority of the constructed
object without any designation this would fit my definition of ambient
authority. According to your definition, given that the holder of the
authority uses a reference to wield this authority it would not be ambient
authority.

So either my definition of ambient authority is totally out of sync, or
the above definition needs some more tuning.

Rob