General Certificates

Abstract

This paper looks into existing certificate standards, argues that they have shortcomings in violation of basic privacy and design principles, and proposes a generalized notion of certificates about arbitrary attributes by arbitrary certifiers. Such general certifi cates are based on the notion of an immutable minimal principal (authenticated person) handle, called "epersID," to designate the person about which attributes are certified. They can be individually access-controlled such that no unnecessary information is being spuriously revealed in transactions. General certificates enable "identity-blinded identified information."