RE: Resend: ISSUE:[UC-8-0*:Intermediaries*]

[Carlisle Adams <carlisle.adams@entrust.com>]

Title: RE: Resend: ISSUE:[UC-8-0*:Intermediaries*]

Hi Hal,

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From:   Hal Lockhart[SMTP:hal.lockhart@entegrity.com]
Sent:   Wednesday, March 21, 2001 10:58 AM
To:     'Orchard, David'; security-use@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject:        RE: Resend: ISSUE:[UC-8-0*:Intermediaries*]

If the rule is: Authorities create immutable Assertions, other Authorities
can add their own Assertions, anybody can discard an Assertion, then it will
be easy to understand and hard to misuse. Does anyone have a specific use
case that this breaks?

I certainly vote for this rule.  I'd want us to look very carefully (and very warily) at any use case that can't live within this.

The other issue about Intermediaries is controlled delegation. I don't
remember if it was after Dave left, but at the F2F I deliberately asked
about delegation in the hope of provoking the reaction I got. Bob Blakely
commented "Delegation is the spawn of the devil." I agree with Bob, although
perhaps not for exactly the same reasons. Most people who have been down
that road also have scars.

 
I was still on the call when Bob said this and thought about interjecting but figured no one would hear me.  I can only assume he was trying to be provocative himself (note that he has expressed the same feeling about attribute certificates, but how could he really feel this way about ACs and yet support SAML assertions, which are attribute certificates by definition?).

The reality is that we all see, use, and live with delegation every day.  How many times have you received a bounce-back e-mail message saying, "I'm on vacation until some_date; if you really need 'X', call Josephine at this number..."?  This is delegation in action.  Somehow, nobody seems to get confused by this, get mired down in the complexity of it all, or emerge from "down that road" covered with scars.

There is no question that delegation can get complex; nobody is arguing that point.  However, I contend that if we can't mirror in the electronic domain what we are all accustomed to in our current business practices, then people won't be satisfied with it.  We will need this functionality eventually (at some level of complexity) because customers will demand it.  Why can't we accept that and plan for it now?

Carlisle.