Policy-Discussion

[Jens Paul <cacert AT canyonsport.de>]

Hi!

First: Sorry for not writing the last days ... I was struck by a pretty 
bad flu and nailed to my bed :-((

There have been many good points in the discussion. I liked Ian's 
conclusion to be written down in the policy (at least for an interim 
solution) and Duanes voting for the counter signing proposal.

While I understand Philipp's point of the "less than 1%" isn't that much 
important, I still have to quote Sven's posting:

> what I mean by "legally binding" is:
>  1. in case of an assurance, if a court could convict me, if I make wrong
> statements on the CAP (= Assurance Form), or if it would accept the CAP as
> a piece of evidence.
>  2. in case of a signature, if the signature is accepted by a court like a
> handwritten signature.
>
> (1) can be necessary for (2): If I want to prove, that a certain signature
> is really by the person I want to sue, I may need the CAPs as a piece of
> evidence. If these CAPs turn out to be signed by minors, they will most
> probably ignore it.
>
> The question is simply, if the WoT should provide a network of statements,
> which you can use in front of a court, or not.
>   
Exactly Nr. (2) is my point. As people people in germany easily see that 
using a CAcert cert means using an advanced cert (whatever the policy 
says ...) and therefore the evidence of a signed mail is srengthened., 
they might relly on that fact. But if the assurance was done by minors 
we MIGHT have a diffrent situation. So using CAcert certs might be a 
great danger: (1) It is possible that the evidence is strenghtened OR 
(2) It is possible that the evidence is weakened.

While we can say that's not a problem of CAcert, I think it is not fair 
that we put our users in such a risk. If we need to keep that risk (by 
keeping the youth assurance process as it is) we need to clearly warn 
our potential users about that fact. But not by writing it down 
somewhere. Instead we need to write it somewhere where it is clearly 
seen, maybe on the CAP forms. But if we do so, we are at the point that 
our applicants start ID checking their Assurers and rejecting youth 
assurances as well ....

I already posted my opinion about it, so no need to say it again. What I 
am still missing by those who want to keep it "as is", is a statement 
how we could avoid our users to be in such a situation ...

Greetings
Jens