Miscellaneous questions

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 07:56 +0200, Michel Messerschmidt wrote:
> What about second/third ... names, name changes (e.g. marriage),
> offical pseudonyms (e.g. artist names in Germany), ... ?
Yes of course,.. and lots of other things in other countries and
cultures.


> > The reason: As a mathematicion I consider incompleteness as  
> > incorrectness, that's even what OpenPGP (and actually every digital  
> > signature system) does: If you "just" remove something from the signed  
> > data, signatures won't validate.
> I think you're confusing the "completeness" of the identity with the
> complete name.
I don't think so, because it is unspecified (and probably unspecifyable)
what attributes are part of an identity. You could even say things like
your ICQ-number, your eBay-Account or else are part of your identity.


> Although commonly used, a name is not a good measure for identity.
That's true, that's why I suggested to move the User ID packet away from
holding user attributes and use it as a real ID (something the "should"
be unique, like and email, DNS-address, a "unique" number or string,
etc. etc.).
Instead every attributes should go to the User Attribute package, which
could be easily expanded for stuff like titles, birthday, brithplace,
etc. etc.


> For example, I have different spellings of my name on different 
> official ID cards :)
Ok that's strange ^^. But I know that this happens in Germany too, but
only on "lesser important" documents. AFAIK the personal ID card
(Personalausweis), the Passport and the certificate of birth always have
to contain the complete name.


> If you require a mathematical completeness, use the key ID.
> If used for mail encryption/signatures it makes no sense to be more
> strict than for the email address itself.
???
First of all,... the key ID is only the last 8 octets of the fingerprint
(IIRC)... and are much easier to forge than the fingerprint.

However,.. the neither fingerprint nor the key ID are anything that the
user/keyholder is described by (I mean in the real world).


Best wishes,
Chris.