When high-ranking White House officials are quoted in the media they usually aren’t named because they aren’t authorized to speak on the issue.
We have laws against unauthorized disclosure and not laws that are designed to make unauthorized disclosure of secrets by White House officials easier. Ring signatures would be a tool that can be used if the powerful would want more unauthorized leaks but they don’t.
The same goes for corporations. No cooperation wants to make it more easy for it’s employees to engage in unauthorized disclosure of information.
That leaves the question what kind of organization might give their members ring signatures. Anonymous organizations can easily give out ring signatures but their signatures are worthless. “A member of XY anonymous said …” isn’t different then “A anonymous person said...” if XY anonymous hasn’t a reputation for selective membership.
Some academic organizations might have values that are compatible with having their members being able to speak anonymously while being able to identify as members of the organization.
Practically, there’s the risk of any member of the organization not being careful with their information security and thus allowing a third party to speak in the name of the organization. The possibility of a hacker from 4chan getting the credentials to speak in the name of Havard is likely enough that it’s a tough sell.
That leaves the question what kind of organization might give their members ring signatures.
A ring signature is computed from your own private key and whatever public keys you can find. It’s not something your employer gives you. An employer could fire you for having a public key I guess, but that doesn’t seem like a hard crux for what I’m asking about here.
Some academic organizations might have values that are compatible with having their members being able to speak anonymously while being able to identify as members of the organization.
Well, imagine being a professor at Harvard, and being able to publish a statement that says,
Skub is probably fine. Anti-skub activists are caught up in a moral panic.
Signed: ChristianKI of Harvard University OR Alice Abramson of Amherst University OR Bob Benson of UC Berkeley OR Carol Cook of Cornell University OR...
Shouldn’t this cause a marginal emboldenment of the not-anti-skub contingent at any of those universities? Any skub-tolerator who reads the statement could think, “well clearly I’m not the only one”. If they read two such statements with no overlap of names, they could think “well, clearly there are at least three of us”. I can immediately see practical issues wit this, but is there some strong theoretical argument for why this can’t scale up to the point at which it substantially impacts the level of silence?
Okay, I got it. It seems like your citation of Wikipedia is obfuscating as it doesn’t describe what’s required for calculating the ring signature when you suggest that it provides clarification.
It seems a key question that’s not answered in the Wikipedia page would be whether you can reuse existing private/public keypairs.
If you can reuse existing private/public keypairs, this solution should be able to scale in communities that do publish keys for communicating in an encrypted way with each other.
When high-ranking White House officials are quoted in the media they usually aren’t named because they aren’t authorized to speak on the issue.
We have laws against unauthorized disclosure and not laws that are designed to make unauthorized disclosure of secrets by White House officials easier. Ring signatures would be a tool that can be used if the powerful would want more unauthorized leaks but they don’t.
The same goes for corporations. No cooperation wants to make it more easy for it’s employees to engage in unauthorized disclosure of information.
That leaves the question what kind of organization might give their members ring signatures. Anonymous organizations can easily give out ring signatures but their signatures are worthless. “A member of XY anonymous said …” isn’t different then “A anonymous person said...” if XY anonymous hasn’t a reputation for selective membership.
Some academic organizations might have values that are compatible with having their members being able to speak anonymously while being able to identify as members of the organization.
Practically, there’s the risk of any member of the organization not being careful with their information security and thus allowing a third party to speak in the name of the organization. The possibility of a hacker from 4chan getting the credentials to speak in the name of Havard is likely enough that it’s a tough sell.
A ring signature is computed from your own private key and whatever public keys you can find. It’s not something your employer gives you. An employer could fire you for having a public key I guess, but that doesn’t seem like a hard crux for what I’m asking about here.
Well, imagine being a professor at Harvard, and being able to publish a statement that says,
Shouldn’t this cause a marginal emboldenment of the not-anti-skub contingent at any of those universities? Any skub-tolerator who reads the statement could think, “well clearly I’m not the only one”. If they read two such statements with no overlap of names, they could think “well, clearly there are at least three of us”. I can immediately see practical issues wit this, but is there some strong theoretical argument for why this can’t scale up to the point at which it substantially impacts the level of silence?
Okay, I got it. It seems like your citation of Wikipedia is obfuscating as it doesn’t describe what’s required for calculating the ring signature when you suggest that it provides clarification.
It seems a key question that’s not answered in the Wikipedia page would be whether you can reuse existing private/public keypairs.
If you can reuse existing private/public keypairs, this solution should be able to scale in communities that do publish keys for communicating in an encrypted way with each other.