Using the OTR plugin with Pidgin for verifying GPG public key fingerprints

[erythrocyte]

On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Robert J. Hansen <rjh at sixdemonbag.org>wrote:

> Even then — so what?  Let's say the Type II rate is 25%.  That's a very
> high Type II rate; most people would think that failing to recognize one set
> of fake IDs per four is a really bad error rate.  Yet, if you're at a
> keysigning party where there are five people independently applying a
> 25%-faulty test, the likelihood of accepting a fake ID is under 1%.
>

It really depends on how you're calculating combined probability. If you
take an example of 4 individuals at a keysigning party,

The combined probability that all individuals would accept a fake ID would
be 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 * 1/4 = 0.00390625 .

However, the combined probability that at least one of the encounters would
result in accepting a fake ID would be 1/4 + 1/4 + 1/4 + 1/4  = 1 .

Please do correct me if I've made a mistake. I'm not a math guru by any
means.

But all that aside, I'm pretty sure news reports, etc. of human traffickers,
smugglers, spies, etc. all confirm the fact that national IDs such as
passports can be forged and do in fact slip by immigration authorities
pretty commonly.


I think I've gotten the answer to the question in thread. Thanks.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </pipermail/attachments/20100313/2a5af05f/attachment.htm>