Steganography: a method of identifying Elements signed by the Sovereign

Yes... I'm still working on it. I am a love slave to this Clique Space(TM) thing.

I've been thinking about how one might "digitally sign" an Element so that when it is transmitted amongst Client Devices, that subset of Client Devices which know the same Sovereign can automatically detect that this Element represents cognitive activity of the individual thus manifest. By gosh, the answer appears (currently) to use something called a steganograhical signature. Such a signature is buried within what to the uninformed Client Device appears as an identifier string made up of random bits, each as trivial as the next.

When a Client Device receives a surrogate, it attempts to extract the signature steganographically buried in the surrogate's identifier (perhaps a symmetric key derived from the Client Device's Sovereign) and if it is successful in this task, it subtracts this key from the identifier, reconstitutes the given Element with this difference as its identifier, and stores the Element inside the Sovereign as Elements known to represent the individual manifest by the Sovereign. If the Client Device is unsuccessful, the Element is reconstituted without translating the identifier, and the reconstituted Element is not added to the Sovereign.

When a surrogate needs to be created again, the identifier of an Element not added to the Sovereign is merely copied to the surrogate. However, the identifier of an Element that is known to the Sovereign will be steganographically signed, and the surrogate will be created using this signed identifier.

The signature is buried in the identifier's seemingly random bit pattern, and hence the identifier is also the instrument of authentication to each of those devices "in the know" (possess the same Sovereign). There is no need to transmit a separate signature with the identifier, and so, given a sufficiently strong steganographical scheme, identifier authenticity could never be repudiated.