Comments: VeriSign's conflict of interest creates new threat

Good article! Some basic grammar notes for your next one follow! ;-)


There's no "d" in "privilege". [Footnote 1]

"juridical" is not a word. Should either be "judicial" or "jurisprudence".

Posted by Lamar Gumbody at September 19, 2004 08:44 AM

My spelling always gives me away. Thanks for the fix. For juridical - check it out: http://www.onelook.com/?w=%22juridical%22&ls=a

The reason I chose that word rather than the more normal "justice system" or similar was that I didn't want to load the meaning, and I wanted to direct attention to the administration of the system rather than its purpose.

Posted by Iang at September 19, 2004 09:07 AM

Also, it's "definitely", not "definately".

But, to quibble about spelling in an article exposing the fact that Verisign is essentially "rooted" by law enforcement is pretty petty.

You raise several good points:

CAs should be independent.

It is a conflict of interest for the trust provider to offer wiretap assistance services.

It's government intervention that got us in this mess to start with, so they can't fix it.

Lastly, wiretapping is going to happen, so we should prepare for that eventuality.

Posted by Grady at September 27, 2004 01:49 PM

Thanks, definitely fixed (in 8 entries out of 9). I claim to spell badly so as to keep track of who's reading ;-)

Posted by Iang at September 27, 2004 02:19 PM

Excellent topic. We are fighting against their affiliate in Argentina (called Certisur) because they are going to get the monopoly by simply controlling the government agency that will issue the licenses to whom wish operate as legal certification authorities.

In fact, they already control said agency. It is also a conflict of interest (a company that wants to be licensed in order to issue digital IDs is controlling the agency that will issue such licenses).

I mean, they always worked in such scheme. No big deal for them, because they already have the control of the institutions (a.k.a the government) and they are also very functional to US government interests, so no conflict of interest at all! IMHO, they are more powerful and monopolist than M$.

I also believe that PKI is not the best approach to go for e-government (here is the major market for digital IDs), but the government is extremely weak and easy to get corrupted. More or less, all governments are ready to hear offerings.

Finally, about your comment related to root servers and DNS, perhaps is time to think why all names to be solved must end in a dot...a dot that manages Verisign.

BTW, in the meanwhile, we will try to eject them from here.

Posted by elcarancho at September 28, 2004 09:48 PM
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