Re: [Fsuk-manchester] RMS talk key signing

[Simon Ward]

On Thu, May 01, 2008 at 03:26:47PM +0100, Noah Slater wrote:
> If it's photo ID and it's from a government(ish) institution I don't see why 
> not.
> 
> Simon, what are you thoughts? :)

My thoughts?  Blindly verifying someone based just on their passport/driver’s
licence is something people do, and shouldn’t.  It gets instituted as a
minimum requirement, then people start just checking the ID and nothing
else.

Ideally, you should know the person, and have met them before.  In the
case you haven’t, their ID should be used to help identify them, but you
should also be looking at other things, such as who else can verify
identity (sometimes, people will sign only if N people in their web of
trust have already done so, though there can be a catch-22 there),
public events and pictures that you can match up.

That’s before even coming to whether the ID is a reliable
identification, which I’m sure Dave P has something to say on… If you
don’t know the ID, as I suspect will be the case with Lucy’s, how can
you even put any trust in it?

Simon
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A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved
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