Re: Thoughts from IETF-92

[Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Fred Baker (fred) <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> On Mar 30, 2015, at 3:55 PM, Richard Shockey <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> The CU folks told us that this is the NUMBER 1 issue their members
>> complain about. Yes it is our problem because we define SIP.
>
> I spoke with one of them in the lobby Saturday morning. I explained how what she was calling for was a global (federated?) PKI, and she wasn’t likely to achieve her goal without one.
>
> That it wasn’t a protocol problem, as we have the protocols and protocol support for it. All it takes is money.


All it takes is a business model. The business model for the TLS
WebPKi works fine because people will pay money up front to be able to
take credit cards for payment. Even in the earliest e-commerce days,
the reward was commensurate with the cost.

The business model for S/MIME did not work out because even though
most folk would probably pay $10/yr for an email PKI that lets them
communicate securely with almost anyone, $10/yr to pay to communicate
with the other folk willing to pay for a network with a 0.1% market
share (at best) is much too high.


I think that it is actually quite practical to establish an 'organic'
PKI that could meet the CU requirements.

What I would do is to align cost and benefit by making certificate
registration free and then establish a business that charges people
for telling them if an incoming call is likely to be junk or not. this
model has been validated in DKIM email. Signing your mail with DKIM is
free, having someone tell you what is legit and what is spam is the
bit that costs.

We already have most of the specs. SIP can use certs and we can enroll
the certs in a TRANS type log. The principal obstacle is the lack of
open hardware that can connect up to the telephone devices and perform
the necessary functions.


I think the telcos had better get their act together soon and fix
this. I still have a landline at the moment but it isn't going to be
in the house very long if I continue to get six interruptions a day
from scam artistes.