RE: dissemination of public encryption certificates

[[e-mail] (Julien Pierre)]

Blake,

Blake Ramsdell wrote on 08/14/2003, 14:42:
 >
 > Well, I'm not sure I agree.  There are two major questions that
 > constantly need answers in the mind of an S/MIME client.  These are
 > pretty close to what Michael said in his message:
 >
 > 1. Given a particular email address, give me That Which Is Necessary and
 > Sufficient to send encrypted mail to that email address.
 >
 > 2. Given a particular certificate, is it suitable for signing mail that
 > came from a particular email address.  Michael said "what is it good
 > for", which I think is too broad a question.
 >
 > If we're considering protocols that attempt to answer these types of
 > questions, those are the two questions that need to be answered by that
 > protocol (for interpersonal messaging with S/MIME, that is).

Yes. I believe this is relevant to the SMIME mailing list, even though 
the choice and design of that protocol may not affect the SMIME message 
format itself, as these are major deployment issues.

It would be highly desirable for one protocol to be designated for the 
purpose of solving these problems, as opposed to having a plethora of 
different solutions and having various client programs use different 
approaches, which would get us back to square one.

-- 
I am the dog in dogfood