D1.1.1 - Analysis of Existing Web Protocols for Trusted Content
Jan Camenisch, James Riordan, Sandra Steinbrecher, Laurent Bussard, Phil Janson, Benjamin Kellermann, Ronald Leenes, Rigo Wenning, Patrik Bichsel, Carine Bournez, Ulrich Pinsdorf, Thomas Roessler
This document aims at analyzing the existing web protocol with respect to the support they offer for realizing trustworthy content on the Internet as well as what limitations they pose for such a goal. To this end, we first lay out the principles of how we think one could achieve trustworthy content. In a nutshell, solution proposes to add metadata to the content that allows users to assess to what extend the content is trustworthy. The basic idea here is that entities who process the content (generate, modify, distribute,...) bind assertions about to the content to it. These assertions together with additional knowledge about the processing entities (which essentially are again assertions made by some entity), should allow users to assess the trustworthiness. We then list the relevant existing web protocols and discuss them in context of our architecture and solution sketch. Our conclusion is that the limitations of the current web protocols are not severe but that substantial work is required to implement our architecture.