Tony Hain writes: > Are there other reasons for having authenticated, time-stamped email? I > am sure there are many, but the first I would like to see is the end to > the designation that a fax is acceptable legal evidence, while email is > not. Will an 'anti-spam' focused IETF wg provide that? Maybe by > accident, but not likely. Will an 'authenticated email' wg produce an > end to spam? Not initially, but like the lock, the result is a > technology that enables the social management sphere to accomplish the > greater goal. I, like you, suspect that authenticated email may be helpful in the spam wars, but this must not be viewed in isolation. "Authentication" begs the question of identity, trust in assertion, ownership of identity, and the motivation and foibles of third parties who would likely be needed to scale this to anything that would be useful. In particular, the latter is almost without exception a "be careful for what you wish for" situation. Centralization of power for naming and thus participation would be a very convenient tool to exclude undesirables. Today that's spammers, but where are the checks and balances? What prevents less worthy causes? How do you prevent an unreasonable accrual of power made real by virtue of being the path of least resistance for the great unwashed masses? Unless these issues -- and many more -- can be finessed, the cure might be worse than the disease. Mike