On Sun, 30 Jan 2011 11:57:57 -0200, Carlos Martinez-Cagnazzo said:
What I just don't get if, we as a society, have created institutions we trust with our *money* (AKA banks), why there can't be institutions we trust with our crypto keys. I know that banks sometimes fail, and yes, probably "crypto banks" will sometimes fail as well, but on the whole, the failure rate of trusted institutions can be quite low, acceptably low.
There's a big difference. If a bank screws up and loses $5,000 of my money, I can (at least potentially) sue them and recover $5,000 which is pretty much identical to the $5,000 I lost. If a key escrow company loses my private key, getting back an identical private key is exactly the *wrong* solution. Crypto keys are not interchangable like dollar bills.