Ben Laurie wrote: > > My co-author (a lawyer) responds in detail to Ian Grigg's criticisms.
Thanks for that! As I'm not clear whether the status of the paper is searching of (more, further) detailed criticisms, I've not commented directly on Mr Bohm's remarks. For the most part, we are in agreement. Rather, I'll just quickly mention where I find one large difference of opinion: It's pretty apparent that what passes for common sense and knowledge of the meaning of words in the legal fraternity doesn't necessarily translate to our world of techies. I found the key to this debate was in understanding the full meaning of the word "repudiate" and that involved careful scrutiny of several dictionaries. The same goes for legal concepts such as presumptions, application of law, and so forth - Mr Bohm nailed me on my woeful understanding of rebuttals, and he'd have no trouble nailing the average techie who asserts that private key signatures prove this or that: they do no such thing, they provide evidence, yet, we still face a decade-old obsession with constructing cryptographic systems that purport to prove away all risks. So, I personally don't accept the argument that common sense can fill in the gaps. If common sense and ordinary knowledge had been available in such liberal doses, we wouldn't have spent the last decade or so working with non-repudiation. But, it is only by going through these discussions that I feel I now have a much firmer understanding of why non- repudiation is a crock. So thank you all! Which leaves the issue of what we call the property that differentiates a private key signature from a MAC or MD? iang PS: to refresh: http://www.apache-ssl.org/tech-legal.pdf --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]