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

[Karp, Alan H]

Rob Meijer wrote:
> 
> If that is the case, than the term ambient authority seems misleading.
> 
> If I try to simply decompose and analyze the term 'ambient authority' I
> would come to the following:
> 
> Ambient : of the surrounding area or environment (that is not private)
> Authority : can do something directly or indirectly
> 
> To me, the combination of the two reads like : "Those things a subject can
> do directly or indirectly by virtue of something that is of the
> surrounding area or environment". Does this come close to how you parse
> the term 'ambient authority'?

Yes.
> 
> Expanding on this interpretation, any authority that flows from
> permissions or references that reside within or are bound to an implicitly
> shared (non private) resource or name space would be authority that I
> would interpret as 'of the surrounding area or environment', and thus as
> ambient authority.

That may be the next level of detail for some systems, but I don't think it's needed for the basic definition.  
> 
> In what you define as ambient authority, the term 'ambient' seems to me to
> be a property of the permissions rather than of the authority.
>
Yes, but using a permission can result in some authority being exercised, so I can get away with using the word "authority."  Perhaps "ambient permission" would be a better term, but you go to Wikipedia with the vocabulary you've got.

________________________
Alan Karp
Principal Scientist
Virus Safe Computing Initiative
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
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