Re: [perpass] Draft charter for a Transparency Working Group

[Ben Laurie <[e-mail]>]

On 13 December 2013 14:17, Phillip Hallam-Baker <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 1:51 PM, Ben Laurie <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> How's this?
>>
>> [1] A cryptographically verifiable log is an append-only log of hashes
>> of more-or-less anything that can prove its own correctness
>> cryptographically.
>>
>> For example, from RFC 6962: “The append-only property of each log is
>> technically achieved using Merkle Trees, which can be used to show
>> that any particular version of the log is a superset of any particular
>> previous version. Likewise, Merkle Trees avoid the need to blindly
>> trust logs: if a log attempts to show different things to different
>> people, this can be efficiently detected by comparing tree roots and
>> consistency proofs. Similarly, other misbehaviours of any log (e.g.,
>> issuing signed timestamps for certificates they then don't log) can be
>> efficiently detected and proved to the world at large.”
>
>
> I disagree. The Merkle tree part is only relevant to verification
> efficiency. And I would want to look into it a lot further before committing
> to that particular approach due to the Micali patents and other patents
> applying Merkle to catenate certs.

You disagree that RFC 6962 provides an example? I'm not sure what
you're disagreeing with...

> The property that is important is the chaining of one hash to the next and
> that is the property that is definitively out of patent.

The property that is important is the ability to prove correctness, by
whatever means.