The Entire Provenance of You - Signifiers of Identity

Matt,

I think your first point is correct. We should all start using cryptographic signatures from a young age. Maybe I will work on a unit for second-graders on how to sign with a PGP key that replaces "how to sign your name in cursive." I think one hour a day for three days would be enough:

Hour 1: Anyone using a machine can write down your name and say they are you. They could pretend to be you and say mean things to your friends. Isn't that wrong and scary?

Hour 2: In the modern world, we have a new way to sign our name. This is very hard for other people to copy because, while everyone knows your name, you can have a secret mathematical number that is unique to you. It doesn't cost any money and anyone, even a little kid, can get one. You can use it to make a signature other people cannot copy.

Hour 3 - If someone else has a unique number, you can write them a secret letter that only they can read. No one else without their secret number will be able to figure out what is in it. Isn't that exciting?

Cursive is stupid. Public key cryptography is useful.

If you get kids learning this in second grade, I think it's a good segue into philosophy of free software in third grade. Of course, this does not work for communication over the platforms, but learning that is part of the point.

The issue of having journalists sign material is interesting, but most of the journalists I know don't get most of their video themselves - even at the major networks, nowadays a lot of their footage is originally random citizen footage. And, in the case of signing it, that does compromise an anonymous source.

-- JoeBruner - 30 Apr 2018