6 research outputs found
Size-efficient interval time stamps
http://www.ester.ee/record=b4338625~S1*es
Accountable Certificate Management Using Undeniable Attestations
This paper initiates a study of accountable certificate management methods, necessary to support long-term authenticity of digital documents. Our main contribution is a model for accountable certificate management, where clients receive attestations confirming inclusion/removal of their certificates from the database of valid certificates. We explain why accountability depends on the inability of the third parties to create contradictory attestations. After that we define an undeniable attester as a primitive that provides efficient attestation creation, publishing and verification, so that it is intractable to create contradictory attestations. We introduce authenticated search trees and build an efficient undeniable attester upon them. The proposed system is the first accountable long-term certificate management system. Moreover, authenticated search trees can be used in many security-critical applications instead of the (sorted) hash trees to reduce trust in the authorities, without decrease in efficiency. Therefore, the undeniable attester promises looks like a very useful cryptographic primitive with a wide range of applications
Revisiting the legal regulation of digital identity in the light of global implementation and local difference
This thesis aims to address a vital gap that has emerged in the digital identity regulatory
discourse: how can the legal regulation of digital identity mirror the global nature of digital
identity and be compatible with national local difference?
Digital identity, or the digital representation of an individual, is a complex concept, which
manifests in myriad forms (e.g. authenticators, claims, data or information, identifiers,
presence, relationship representations and reputation) and natures. As such, it engages a
gamut of legal domains ranging from criminal law, constitutional law, human rights law, law
of identity schemes, contract law, intellectual property law, tort law and data protection law.
Digital identity is global and local in its nature, influence and effects. Yet, the digital identity
regulatory discourse has primarily developed in and focussed on the digitally advanced
West, leaving out countries like India which are developing strong digital presences, with
their own digital identity perceptions and needs. This situation is adverse to the sustained
future of digital identity. Thus, the contribution of this thesis lies in filling this gap and
preparing the ground for a dialogue between different countries with different national
agendas through building international and local awareness of how similarities and
differences operate in respect of digital identity, its regulation and providing a modest
solution to help preserve the global and local dimensions of digital identity and its
regulation.
To this end, the thesis carried out comparative legal research on the legal regulation of
digital identity using the UK and India as base jurisdictions. The original hypothesis was that
that immense differences in the legal regulation of digital identity between the comparator
countries would emerge. Yet, though differences were evident, considerable degrees of
similarity also emerged, not just on the superficial level of mere identity of rules, but also in
legal practice, in large part attributable to India’s penchant for legal transplants.
While the transplantation of Western law did not result in a full-scale rejection of the
transplanted laws in relation to digital identity in India, there are indications of anomalies
caused by the imposition of Western cultural norms through law on an Indian society ill
prepared for it. Thus there has resulted a tension between the local and the global, the
indigenous and the externally imposed. The challenge is thus to resolve this, taking into
account, on the one hand the need to maintain the global nature and relevance of digital
identity and the other, the need to accommodate and be responsive to local differences.
The thesis proposes a tentative solution called the tri-elemental framework (TeF) which
draws from the Indian philosophical and legal concept of dharma (and its elements of Sad
Achara, Vyavahara and Prayaschitta) and learns from the most universally relevant digital
identity proposal, De Hert’s right to identity. The solution provides one way in which the law
regulating digital identity, whatever its nature, can be made sense of and acquire cultural
meaning appropriate to local contexts