At 09:08 AM 10/11/00 -0400, Arnold G. Reinhold wrote:
My concern is that the vast majority of informed lay people, lawyers, judges, legislators, etc. will hear "non-repudiation" and hear "absolute proof." If you doubt this, read the breathless articles written recently about the new U.S. Electronic Signatures Act.
I think it would be more sensible to worry that lawyers and judges will hear "non-repudiation" and stop paying attention to anything else the speaker has to say about law or evidence, as the concept of "non-repudiation" as discussed by technologists is fundamentally incompatible with the rules of civil & criminal procedure, the Constitution, and the rules of evidence, at least in the United States. If it were possible to reduce questions about facts to the results of math problems, we wouldn't need courts at all. That suggests two things to me - (a) that's a very, very difficult problem to solve, and we certainly won't solve it by handwaving away important questions like security of keying material, and (b) even if it were solved, it's very likely the established legal system would declare it unsolved in order to protect its continued existence. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@netbox.com