Financial Cryptography Update: Notary Publics to Cryptographers - keep yur grubby mits off! ( was Cryptography Rides to the Notaries' Rescue)

[Steve Schear]

  [For an alternate view on the applicability of cryptography to the notary 
function]

Financial Cryptography Update: Notary Publics to Cryptographers - keep yur 
grubby mits off!

                              April 10, 2006


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https://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000694.html



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I've often written about how certain words are stolen and
misrepresented in the field of FC.  One is non-repudiation, which
continues to bedevil some architectures and policies where they haven't
been informed of the impossibility.  Another is trust, which is more
often used as a marketing plus than an admission of fundamental
weakness.  Yet another -- we're on a roll here -- is digital signature,
which Lynn euphemistically refers to as sometimes being foolishly
confused with signatures made by humans.

Philipp pointed me to a 2001 American Notarization Association position
paper complaining about the abuse of the term 'notary' by the tech
industry.

http://www.nationalnotary.org/userimages/Notary_Terms.pdf
A Position on Misleading Usage of Notary Terms in the Electronic Age

=================
Notarization, Notary, and related terms are being co-opted by certain
private companies and state legislatures and applied to processes that
have nothing to do with valid, legally recognized notarization. These
new processes either do not involve state-commissioned Notaries at all
or they violate key principles involving trusted third parties,
principles that form the bedrock of commerce and law.

The repercussions of this verbal misappropriation can be devastating to
consumers because, believing they are receiving certain protections
from a process misrepresented as notarization, they may instead find
themselves victimized by loss of valuable personal and real property
without the legal assurances offered by valid notarization.
==================

Where I've complained about the term notary is in the OpenPGP forum
where there are efforts (every 12 months or so) to bolster up the
capability of that protocol to do notary stuff.  My comments were quite
simple - the meaning and application of the word is completely
different between civil law and common law, so when you apply the term
into an international, cross-jurisdictional cryptoprotocol such as
OpenPGP, which were you referring to?

Such comments were nowhere near as informed as this document, which
includes a very concise, clear definition of the process, at least in
US terms:

========8<==================
Fundamental Components of Notarization
In order to fully appreciate the harm caused by misleading usage of the
term notarization it is necessary to understand the fundamental
components of a traditional notarial act. Briefly explained, there are
five essential steps in an acknowledgment;2 acknowledgment is the
notarial act most often used to authenticate documents of great
monetary value:

 Personal Appearance:	The document signer must appear in person
before, and communicate with, the Notary Public, face to face, in the
same room. Physical presence allows the Notary not only to identify the
signer, but also to make observations and commonsense judgments that
the individual appears willing and aware.

 Identification:  The Notary must positively identify the document
signer beyond a reasonable doubt, either through personal knowledge of
the individuals identity, the sworn vouching of a personally known
credible witness, or reliable identification documents.

 Acknowledgment by Signer:  Personal appearance and identification are
meaningless without a context, and it is the signers active
acknowledgment of a particular signature, document, and transaction
that provides the context.

 Lack of Duress:  Integral to the acknowledgment is the Notarys
observation that the signer was not under duress or direct physical
threat at the hands of a third party.

 Awareness:  Essential as evidence of the signers intent is the
Notarys observation and judgment that the signer appears to be
conscious and aware at the time of signing.
=========>8=============

Hot Dang!  Try doing that in a remote-parties cryptoprotocol with
NIST-approved blah blah.  I have to admit, I'm impressed by the quality
of writing in this paper.  It goes right for the jugular.

=========8<=============
Corporate License
Increasingly, American corporations offering Public Key Infrastructure
(PKI)3 management services have been using the terms Notary and
notarization to describe their services. These processes typically
involve the time-date stamping of text, and they amount to notarization
only in the metaphorical sense. These services do not provide the
assurances associated with official notarial acts by a
state-commissioned Notary Public and, for that reason, they lack the
legal authority of proper notarization, which is ... to provide prima
facie evidence of the truth of the facts recited in the certificate and
to establish the genuineness of the signatures attached to an
instrument.4
=========>8=============

It is repeatedly asked in circles where crypto really matters what the
form of statement your average CA is making.  This paper points out one
of the flaws in the process - a CA may well not have any legal
authority to make the statements that it is purporting to make!  Think
the so-called digital signature laws might resolve this?  Think again:

=========8<=============
Governmental License
Another development is adding to the current state of confusion in the
marketplace and it is potentially more harmful to the public than
deceptive misuse of sensitive terms by corporate marketers; that is,
poorly thought-out redefinition of notarial procedures by hasty
lawmakers.
=========>8=============

Names are named!  Not only are the States various slammed for their
laws, many commercial services are given a darn good slapping.	Read
the whole thing, if only to see how no-nonsense rejections of poorly
thought-out marketing programmes can be written.  We need more of
these!

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