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Re: Trust vs. accountability



On Tue, 17 Feb 1998, Michael Robinson wrote:

-> >Ed wrote:
-> >For example, the fact that you trust your computer does not
-> >make it accountable, no? 
-> 

-> > Michael wrote:
-> >From the real world:
-> /*
->  * Copyright (c) 1994-1996 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
->  *
->  * This software is provided "AS IS," without a warranty of any kind.
-> ALL
->  * EXPRESS OR IMPLIED CONDITIONS, REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES, INCLUDING ANY
->  * IMPLIED WARRANTY OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR
->  * NON-INFRINGEMENT, ARE HEREBY EXCLUDED. SUN AND ITS LICENSORS SHALL NOT BE
->  * LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES SUFFERED BY LICENSEE AS A RESULT OF USING, MODIFYING
->[snip] 

Michael:

This has *nothing* to do with the issue at hand. The fact that SUN does
not accept liabilities for the computer they sell to you does not make
THAT computer more or less trusted by YOU for any purpose. They could
provide 100% coverage and you might think it is not trusted for some
purpose you have in mind, such as guiding your spaceship to Pluto and
back. 

My question was not whether SUN trusts their computer or not. I discussed
the question: "the fact that you trust your computer does not make it
accountable, no? " just to highlight the difference between trust and
accountability.

For example, is your e-mail address trusted by you? Do you trust that you
will receive my response? Look, you can't be certain because there is a
finite probability that this e-mail will get lost and NEVER arrive at your
machine or it may be intercepted by MITM and never get there, etc.

However, is your e-mail address accountable? 
Obviously not. Which just highlights the difference, again.

Further, suppose this list's moderator would ask for a $ 100.00 deposit
from each one of us so that in the case of abuse a fine of $ 100.00 would
be immediately imposed upon the abuser. That would make you accountable to
the list, but would that make you trustable?
Obviously not, by just that criteria (even though you may be trustable,
there is no evidence to that effect -- since there is no evidence, the
belief is zero)

So, this also highlights that accountability does not imply trust, whereas
before we saw that trust did not imply accountability. 

So, that's why accountability has no place in the focused layer we are
working in -- and we are focusing exactly so that we can deal with the
least number of variables we need to.

Cheers,

Ed 
______________________________________________________________________
Dr.rer.nat. E. Gerck                     egerck@novaware.cps.softex.br
http://novaware.cps.softex.br
    --- Meta-Certificate Group member, http://www.mcg.org.br ---


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