[Freedombox-discuss] Identity management

[Mike Rosing]

Howdy,

I looked at MonkeySpheres and PGP (and GPG) and I have a philosophical 
question about "Box identity" and "User identity".  The details of GPG and 
PGP are the use of large primes which are not humanly possible to 
remember.  This forces the use of some disk storage for secret keys.

One of the main arguments for using elliptic curve crypto is that any key 
can be used.  Usually it is a hash of a pass phrase (and one can go nuts 
dealing with pass phrase security too, but let's not go there for now). 
The fundamental philosophy is that the User identity is never stored 
except in the user's head.  This is very different than the way GPG and 
PGP are set up.

My personal feeling is that it is far safer to not have any tie between 
the person and digital media.  A person's secret key can be derived every 
time they need it, on any device using a simple hash function.  This 
allows multiple identities very easily (so long as the person remembers 
the pass phrase for each identity).  This makes the secret key ephemeral 
as far as hardware goes, which makes the system safer from post mortem 
attacks.

The other problem I've had with PGP and GPG in the past is that it 
requires the user to understand what the security system is doing.  I'd 
rather see an "invisible" security system.  It might be more complicated 
internally, but from the users perspective the security system should just 
work, or it should just fail.

I think this fits in with the philosophy of the Freedombox - anybody 
should just plug it in and go.  As a blue print I don't mind starting with 
Monkeysphere - but in the long run I think it requires the user to know 
too much.

I've only just started looking into this, so if I'm way off base for what 
the goals are please set me straight.

Patience, persistence, truth,
Dr. mike