newbie question about identities

[rhkelly]

Ben Finney wrote:

> On 03-Oct-2003, rhkelly wrote:
> 
>>If you think of it, the purpose of Public Key Infrastructure 
 >>(PKI) is directly opposite to the notion of anonymity.
> 
> Almost, but see below.
> 
>>...that which is *public* can not be *anonymous*...
> 
> On the contrary; PKI enables anonymity *and* trust, by giving 
 > assurance of continuity between anonymous messages.

(Whereby we introduce the notion of 'granularity
of anonymity' :)

I said just 'PKI' where I should have said PKI/WOT.
(or perhaps just WOT - in context of gpg, PKI *is* WOT -
I know, gpg /can/ be used without WOT; but it gets to
be difficult to do so, since almost every component in
it assumes otherwise. But this *is* a different topic).
On the other hand, if I change your sentence above
to replace PKI with PKC ('public key cryptosystems' -
of which gpg *is* one), I agree completely.

> Anonymous remailer networks... [and] ...
> ...practical implementation of this, see Invisiblog:
>     <http://invisiblog.com/>


Interesting reference, thanks.

Roger