> My proposition is that the argument that they (and their associated webs > of trust) are inherently trustworthy because of external pressures is a > flawed assumption because they do not have the proposed level of > pressure applied to them since most of the people affected by their web > of trust don't understand it. They don't have to. I don't understand how my supermarket gets their meat, but I trust them to use safe sources because I know that if they didn't those who do understand would tell me, and then I'd figure out a way to avoid it. No CA wants to find out what market forces will appear as soon as they prove to be untrustworthy. There are already many vehicles for immediately deploying blacklists. For example, Symantec could release an update for any of their security products that removed a root CA. It wouldn't take more than a small percent of web users to have a problem with a CA before people wouldn't want their certificates to be signed by that CA. The CA market is competitive. DS
