How to insure that data acquired to verify treaty compliance are trustworthy

The author presents a solution to the problem of how to make it possible for two mutually distrusting (and presumed deceitful) parties, the host and the monitor, to both trust a data acquisition system that informs the monitor and perhaps third parties, whether the host has or has not violated the terms of a treaty. He starts by assuming that such a data acquisition system exists, and that the opportunities for deception lie only in the manipulation, i.e. forgery, modification, retransmission, etc. The author shows that it is possible to satisfy simultaneously the interests of all parties. The technical device on which this resolution depends is the concatenation of two or more private authentication channels to create a system in which each participant need only trust that part of the whole that he or she contributed. In the resulting scheme, no part of the data need to be kept secret from any participant at any time; no party nor collusion of fewer than all of the parties can utter an undetectable forgery; no unilateral action on the part of any party can lessen the confidence of others as to the authenticity of the data, and third parties, i.e. arbiters, can be logically persuaded of the authenticity of data.<
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