Building a Web of Trust is fun (by alaric)
Well, I've now done two ORG keysignings: the original one at Imperial College Union and another one at OpenTech.
Both worked out quite well - they've both been informal ones, where pre-registration of your key on the Wiki page is optional; at an appointed time and place, a bunch of strangers meet up and look at each other's legal proofs of ID and details of their digital identity, then go home and issue cryptographically signed statements that they think the legal ID and the digital ID match. Which, as I have mentioned before, is just one way of building trust webs. Anonymous check-my-ID keysignings copy a real-world statement of identity into a digital identity framework, which is scaleable since total strangers can sign each other's keys. Verifying digital identities based on pseudonyms involves linking a reputation to a digital identity, which is a little slower to scale since it takes time to check a reputation (generally, you can only do it for people you have formed a relationship with, even if it's just reading their blog), but in many ways more valuable.
So, I'd like to keep organising key signings, until people stop turning up!
My hunch is that, after a few parties, everyone in the region who wants to attend one will have, and will then be thoroughly rooted in the local web of trust. So attendance will drop off, as the only people who keep coming will be people who want to come and meet up and chat anyway (even if they've already swapped signatures with everyone else present) - and new people who create an identity and want to link it into the Web (and perhaps meet other local cyphergeeks).
London's certainly big enough to provide a suitable population, I think, if I organise bi-weekly or monthly regular signings at a nominated public location; I'm in London at the beginning of every other week for the foreseeable future, so I'm going to propose that I establish a routine!
But I'm also keen to get more involved in the Bristol and Glocuester geek scenes, too, what with it actually being near where I live. Perhaps just monthly. I'll see what interest I can raise...
Crypto / security | alaric | 
Thu 10th Jul 2008 8:16 pm
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