[cap-talk] (no subject)

[James A. Donald]

Rob Meijer wrote:
> 1) "Given one end of a communication channel, an authentication procedure
>     establishes which principal is probably at the other end."
> 
> 2) "Authentication is the validation of a specific property of an object,
>     where this property must either be a source of authority, a source of
>     accountability, or both."
> 
> I personally feel that 1 is to far detached from every day usage of the
> word, is to much centered around use by the identity based mechanisms, and
> is complicating something quit simple by doing so.

"1" Commits us to identity.  Identity is always hard, and subject to 
numerous hard to deal with failure modes.  Thus, for example, PKI fails 
stop phishing.  Further, often what one wants is not identity, but 
qualification, and identity is merely an indicator, a difficult to use 
indicator, of the relevant qualification.