Subject: Re: QC DN "qualities". Was: I-DACTION:draft-ietf-pkix-qc-04.txt

From: Stephen Kent <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2000 08:49:02 -0400

Tom,

>      My point is that in very many cases, an employee serial number or
>something like that is just as good for the RP's as a department.  Its
>greater stability compensates for its lack of user-friendliness.  As you
>rightly pointed out to Anders, if manual selection of one user from a list
>of choices is the primary scenario in which an extra attribute is used,
>serial numbers aren't the best way to make such a selection.  However, they
>may well be more useful for access control lists or for non-repudiation.

I think the employee serial number serves a different function from 
the organizational fine structure attributes.  the former is 
appropriate when stability over time is critical, for the reasons 
that Denis has introduced his permanent identifier attribute. 
However, when one wants to make an access control decision based on 
organizational affiliation, the later form of ID is more helpful. 
Also, as I noted earlier, from a human cognitive perspective, serial 
numbers are not a useful way to disambiguate individuals.

Steve