That's right, you're reading my 400th post. With few exceptions I don't tend to get introspective about this blog on this blog, so I'll keep this entry short and sweet.

I wrote my first post on March 25, 2006, which means that I wrote one post approximately every four days. And while I always get a lot of attention for my SSL poetry, I see that I've only actually published SSL poems on four occasions, an average of one every 394 days. I'll try to be better about that.

A recent New York Times article discusses the concerns held by online civil rights groups that oppressive governments around the world might work with certificate authorities (CAs) through either coercion or willing partnership to compromise the integrity of private and/or corporate online communications.

The article points out that proliferation of CAs around the world means that the world's browser and device vendors have given the tremendous responsibility of issuing certificates to a very broad variety of organizations. Given that the conduct of these CAs is not policed to any effective degree, unscrupulous CAs could easily allow governments to decrypt communications, use compromised information for a variety of political purposes and not face any retribution.

Such concerns highlight the need for individuals and organizations to look to longstanding responsible CAs...

I just confirmed that I'll be a speaker at the Online Trust and Cybersecurity Forum in Washington D.C. on September 22 to 24, brought to us by the Online Trust Alliance. It's a good lineup, and I'm looking forward to it.

Here's some weekend fun for loyal SSL Blog readers.

Back before VeriSign launched the award-winning Cart Whisperer viral campaign, we were toying with various ideas. We always intended the anchor of the campaign to be a highly entertaining, breakthrough video that called attention to the social evil that is abandoned shopping carts. As with the final treatment, the video would direct viewers to the No More Abandoned Carts site. At one point I personally scripted a candidate concept before one of our writers eventually provided the script that went on to be viewed more than five million times.

I recently discovered my script, reread it, and decided that I still like it quite a bit. So I thought I'd share. Have fun.