[cabfpub] C=GR, C=UK exceptions in BRs

Gervase Markham gerv at mozilla.org
Fri Mar 17 14:08:14 UTC 2017


On 17/03/17 11:26, Dimitris Zacharopoulos via Public wrote:
> From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2, it is documented
> that the European Commission
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Commission> generally uses ISO
> 3166-1 alpha-2 codes *with two exceptions*: EL (not GR) is used to
> represent Greece and UK (not GB) is used to represent the United Kingdom.

UK is "exceptionally reserved" in ISO 3166:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2#Exceptional_reservations
so therefore can't be taken by another country. However, EL is not so
reserved as far as I can see, and so could be allocated to another
country at any time.

Without wishing to say "bad luck, Dimitris, but we're OK" :-), it seems
that we could if we chose permit the use of "UK", but it would be unwise
to permit the use of "EL".

> could we invoke 9.16.3?

Only if there was a law in Greece or another country which said that
"EL" must be used as the country code for Greece in digital certificates.

Gerv



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