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ls612yesterday at 10:57 PM1 replyview on HN

My point is that as far as I understand (not a cryptography expert) once you have the mathematical concept of asymmetric cryptography you also have the mathematical concept of a certificate, so you can't have one without the other.


Replies

__MatrixMan__today at 1:31 AM

Well, it goes one way, so yeah you can't have a mathematically verifiable certificate without asymmetric key-pair cryptography.

It's just that there's nothing pro-authority about making it easy for people to verify: "this data hasn't changed since the signer signed it." It's a neutral capability.

There are cases where we can and should blame technologists for building antisocial things that shouldn't exist, but I think that cryptography for the most part falls on the pro-social side of that spectrum.