[ih] email at scale

[Tony Li]

On May 17, 2012, at 5:38 AM, Miles Fidelman wrote:

> It occurs to me to wonder if these are unsolvable problems.  I mean, they've been with us
> since the beginnings of language - be it verbal, chiseled on stone tablets, scribed on parchment,
> printed on paper, or rendered as bits.  What's changed, and continues to change is the scale of
> things - both the number of messages moving around the world, and the attack surface. Perhaps
> we're doomed to a continual arms race between attacker and defender.  (Not to say that we should
> stop trying though.)


I didn't see a response to this, and I believe that it deserves one.

At this point, the entire notion of identity seems to have some very strong requirements for security.  And security has become pretty deeply rooted in cryptography, which is obviously an ongoing arms race. So I think you are correct that we are in fact doomed, but should try anyway.

The good news is that it seems equally likely we can make practical progress here and work towards mechanisms that leverage the best crypto capabilities of the day in a reasonably agile way.  At this point, I have to admit that I'm an engineer and thus this counts as a pragmatic solution.

We just need the right person to pick up the ball and run with it.

Regards,
Tony