Re: Challenge: Find potential use cases for non-trivial confinement

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Mon, 1 May 2006 17:00:26 +0200,
Pierre THIERRY <address@hidden> wrote:
> Why the hell then should we worry about security among users of the same
> system? Let's them choose socialy what they have access to, instead of
> enforcing those access policies with technical solutions!

This is not an unreasonable thing to do.  However, this is only
possible if there actually is a social level, a social network of
interaction between the users that allows them to make these
decisions.

In the context of a computer system, we do not always have this.  If
the other entities on your computer are anonymous, and not part of
your social network (for example, because the group of users is too
big and heterogenous, or because we are actually talking about a
browser that may be compromised by a worm), then there is no possible
basis for enforcing the access policies socially.  In these cases, the
technical solutions may work better.

So, yes, there are legitimate cases for some security policies, and it
is interesting to explore how technical and social policies interact.

Thanks,
Marcus