[mdx] what to trust

[Josh Howlett]

> > So what you say is that the only way to encode trust in metadata 
> > *internal* to a metadata aggregator is signatures.
> > That might be true... I need to think about that.
> 
> I think there's another way:
> 
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/31109/sstc-m
etadata-attr-cd-01.html
> 
> You could include an assertion in the EntityDescriptor which 
> acted as a trust decoration.
> 
> My earliest thought was that an authentication assertion 
> might be the most appropriate vehicle for this, ...

Let me expand on that. I think it's appropriate /if/ you consider entity
registration as equivalent to principal authentication. I've not
considered the appropriateness of this in any depth; but it stuck me
that some of the AuthnStatement semantics might be useful; for example,
AuthnContext for expressing the Registration Practise associated with
the entity.

josh.

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