------- Forwarded Message From: "LadyNada" <ladynada@ix.netcom.com> To: snet-l@world.std.com Date: Sun, 26 Nov 1995 13:26:39 +0000 Subject: Post Office to approve some internet email - -- Area : AEN NEWS -----------------------------------------( M-BOARD.SU1 )---- Msg# 22280 Date: 11-18-95 19:01 From: jared@alaska.net Read: No Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: Oh, great. The Post Office is going to certify Internet mail. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Jared Armstrong" <jared@alaska.net> Originally to: news@aen.org Original Date: Sat, 18 Nov 95 18:47 EST http://techweb.cmp.com/techweb/ia/18issue/18post.html

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Post Office offers Internet digital ID

Certification authority a key enabler of electronic commerce

By Gail Bronson

Side bar WASHINGTON - Come next summer, the U.S. Postal Service expects to be up and running with a service that will identify senders and receivers of Internet messages, a critical enabler of electronic commerce.

Specifically, the Postal Service will operate a certification authority for public-key certificates used to digitally sign messages transmitted over the Internet.

The Postal Service expects the service to be of particular interest to anyone involved in electronic commerce or electronic data interchange, in which the ability to assure the identity of both the sender and receiver of information can be crucial.

"Right now there is no way to figure out if messages on the Internet have been tampered with nor is there any way to authenticate the genuine identity of a sender," said Paul Raines, program manager for electronic commerce at the Postal Service. "It could be a dog on the other end of the Internet now for all you know."

Limited beta tests of the Postal Service's system already are under way within the federal government, at the Federal Aviation Administration, Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service.

"We're eager to work with VeriSign [RSA Data Security Inc. spin-off] and any other certification authorities to come up with ways to help with cross certification," Raines said. "We're not in this to compete with private companies, rather, we're trying to enable [the electronic commerce] industry."

Some users may find the Postal Service certification authority service more appealing than private alternatives because its service will carry the weight of law - tampering with Internet messages would be as much a crime as tampering with regular U.S. mail. On the other hand, there is always the lingering concern of having to deal with a federal bureaucracy.

The Postal Service intends to play two roles in the certification business.

First, as a certifying service the federal agency will provide the code, or public-key certificate, necessary for recipients of digitally signed messages to identify the sender. This service will be necessary to decrypt mail unless the two correspondents previously exchanged their keys privately. Second, the Postal Service will maintain a server to manage a public register of public-key certificates accessible off the Internet, Raines said.

The Postal Service will conduct market studies to gauge demand before deciding how much individuals must pay to obtain someone else's public key certificate. In addition, the Postal Service will sell for less than a dollar an electronic date-time stamp to prove the existence of a message in a particular point in time.

"We're taking the same attributes of hard copy that make them legally binding and transferring them to electronic correspondence," Raines said.

The Postal Service is working with several companies, including Premenos Corp., to develop the necessary software, Raines said. The user agent and interface specifications for designing software to interface with the Postal Service's server, however, are available free to any one willing to sign a licensing agreement, Raines said.

Regardless of how such arrangements work themselves out, the Postal Service intends to operate this business on a nonprofit, self-supported basis. "We don't intend to have first-class mail supporting Internet mail," Raines said.

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