At 02:07 PM 1/6/98 -0800, Declan McCullagh wrote:
This is for a story for Time on the "new" U.S .Postal Service. I vaguely recall the USPS trying to set digital signature standards and/or serve as a CA. I'd like to mention this.
Can't remember the details, though. Does anyone have 'em (or a pointer to them) handy?
A few months back I asked a USPS rep about this, and was told that the idea had been scrapped. I do not know that this was correct. The USPS was going to do timestamping as well as act as a CA as I recall. The timestamping is a action that "postmarks" the digitally signed message. Many attorneys feel this is a very good thing, though I have had a hard time justifying the need for this to some technically inclined people. Try "digital postmark" in yahoo. http://www.aegisstar.com/uspsepm.html http://xent.ics.uci.edu/FoRK-archive/fall96/0328.html An interesting feature of the digital postmark is that the USPS was making the claim that if you receive an email that the USPS send to you that was not meant for you, then you have committed a federal crime when you read it. Additional timestamping services are available perhaps from Pitney Bowes, Arthur Anderson, and http://www.itconsult.co.uk/stamper.htm. My memory on this fails me. -- Robert Costner Phone: (770) 512-8746 Electronic Frontiers Georgia mailto:pooh@efga.org http://www.efga.org/ run PGP 5.0 for my public key