signatures for other people's emails

[Mark H. Wood]

I also thought it would be preferable just to pass the message through
the person whose prestige would, if lent, get you a reading.  The
problem with having the message come from an unknown is that it is
coming from an unknown.  If the message is not opened, it doesn't
matter whose signatures are on it, because they will not be seen.  So,
I don't think that multiple signatures addresses the original problem
at all.

However, there are uses for documents which must bear multiple
signatures from *known* individuals or roles, and being able to
present all of those signatures as a set, rather than having them
scattered through layers of MIME frosting, would be valuable to some.
OTOH some types of multiple signature may require "signature over
signature":  a signed document contained in another signed document,
so that the outer signature attests that at the time it was made, the
inner document bore a specific signature.  It may be possible to
compress the structure if there were defined signature types for these
uses, so that one knows (for example) to include all of the foregoing
signatures in the text to be validated.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood at IUPUI.Edu
Machines should not be friendly.  Machines should be obedient.
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