[cabfpub] [EXTERNAL]Re: Draft SMIME Working Group Charter

[Bruce Morton]

Hi Wayne,

Can you elaborate on why we should exclude identity validation from the initial scope?

My thinking is that many CAs which are currently issuing S/MIME certificates are also including identity. I assume that most use similar methods that are defined in the BRs to validate identity. It would seem that it should be included in the scope to cover current practice.

Thanks, Bruce.

From: Public [mailto:public-bounces at cabforum.org] On Behalf Of Wayne Thayer via Public
Sent: January 25, 2019 1:37 PM
To: Ryan Sleevi <sleevi at google.com>; CA/Browser Forum Public Discussion List <public at cabforum.org>
Subject: [EXTERNAL]Re: [cabfpub] Draft SMIME Working Group Charter

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I agree that we should exclude identity validation from the initial scope of this working group.

On Fri, Jan 25, 2019 at 10:04 AM Ryan Sleevi via Public <public at cabforum.org<mailto:public at cabforum.org>> wrote:

Finally, regarding membership criteria, I'm curious whether it's necessary to consider WebTrust for CAs / ETSI at all. For work like this, would it make sense to merely specify the requirements for a CA as one that is trusted for and actively issues S/MIME certificates that are accepted by a Certificate Consumer. This seems to be widely inclusive and can be iterated upon if/when improved criteria are developed, if appropriate.

This would allow a CA that is not eligible for full Forum membership to join this WG as a full member. How would that work? Would we require such an organization to join the Forum as an Interested Party? If the idea is that such an organization wouldn't be required to join the Forum, then I don't believe that was anticipated or intended in the design of the current structure. It's not clear to me that we should permit membership in a CWG without Forum membership. For instance, allowing this may create loopholes in the IPR obligations that are defined and administered at the Forum level.

There's also a bootstrapping issue for membership, in that until we know who the accepted Certificate Consumers are, no CA can join as a Certificate Issuer. I'm curious whether it makes sense to explicitly bootstrap this in the charter or how we'd like to tackle this.

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