Re: Thinking outside the box

On 17/03/13 05:16, Marc Perkel wrote:
> OK - let's think outside the box. Let's pretend e,ail as we know is
> going away and we are going to create an entirely new system from
> scratch. Nothing has to be compatible. How would we do it right?

An invitation to brainstorm and daydream?  Why not?

I think you'd be looking for a means of private communication that is
flexible, administratively simple, not tied to any particular provider,
but which is free to require more modern processor resources and
connectivity than SMTP.  I'd suggest a decentralised web of trust where
each address is linked to a public key (as at present there would be a
potential many-to-many relation between address and individual, but in
most cases one address is one individual).  One recipient site may
choose to trust given academic institution's key with trust 0.9, which
trusts most of its students with trust 0.9, which to the first
(recipient) site means 0.81.  That institution has the responsibility of
publishing its trust level for compromised student accounts, but that
doesn't stop any other site also having an opinion (equivalent of RBLs).
 Similarly, default trust levels might be 0.5 for a good
freemail/free-ID provider (if such things are even needed), which might
trust new accounts starting at 0.01 until behaviour (such as two-way
correspondence with trusted accounts) earns them trust.

Trust and behaviour is computed during initial handshake from the
supplied public keys of sender and authorities, and anything below a
given level is rejected with immediate feedback to sender.  (Recipients
could also choose to trust a memorable plaintext address, name or number
for a given period if expecting mail from a physical contact, as a
convenient alternative to exchanging a key in person or receiving it
through a third party.)  Direct delivery from client to postbox would
eliminate MSAs, store-and-forward and backscatter.  Trust would be based
on cryptographic identity, not network topology, so would be adaptable
to transports other than IPv4.

That kind of thing, Mark?

BTW Thanks John for keeping the list going.  I've lost my digest setting
from mailman, so sent "set asrg digest-MIME" to
[email protected].  A footer would be good, and I suspect many
ex-digest users would appreciated to at least go "prefix".

C