[ih] email at scale

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Wed May 23 17:40:13 PDT 2012


Leo Vegoda wrote:
> On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Miles Fidelman
> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>  wrote:
>>> On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 10:09:00AM -0700, Tony Li wrote:
> [...]
>
>> Pretty much any country that has some kind of economy has banks and notaries
>> and such - otherwise, international contracts and business would be pretty
>> much impossible.  That's a pretty good place to start.
> I think banks and notaries get you a fair way but don't come close
> enough for anything that is truly inclusive. Even in developed
> countries like Britain there are still millions of people who do not
> have bank accounts but those people still have access to
> telecommunications systems using pre-pay accounts. Anything that
> relies on banks excludes a lot of people and while it's common to have
> notaries in UPS stores and so on in the US their services are used
> less in other countries, so there are fewer available. There are
> barely 1,000 in England&  Wales.

Just seems like we have ways to establish trusted identities for 
non-electronic purposes (like, say, obtaining a passport or drivers' 
license) - seems like that's a pretty good starting point.  Show up in 
person, somewhere, to validate your identity and take things from there.

Miles



-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra





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