There is a fundamental security dilemma here. Years ago the original designers of Privacy Enhanced Mail (PEM) had the notion that users couldn't be trusted, so the idea was that there would be one root CA and it would only issue certificates to people who proved who they were. Software would only trust this one CA. In this fashion, if the software said "This came from Jeff Schiller, of MIT" by golly that is where it came from. No end-user preferences to get wrong, no dialog boxes to click away unread. I even remember arguments along the lines of if a signature verification failed, the message would be discarded and the user not permitted to read the "damaged" message.
The dilemma is that when you build such a system, the guy who is the root always turns out to be a reptile (or is eaten by a reptile who takes her place).
-Jeff
Jeff you hit a hot button <grin>... You would love the BGP RP-Sec stuff going on at IETF etc... I "think" root authority for live routing protocols is out of the picture. However, you may want to stay tuned and speak up if you feel a root authority for routing protocols is bad. Regards, Blaine