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Digitally Notarized Documents in Brazil
Remote writes: "As of next year, Brazilians will be able to obtain notary-authenticated digital documents and have them sent over the Internet (English) . You can also obtain a CD or floppy from a notary office, containing your document encrypted with an assymetric key. The key generation, though, demands that one shows up in person at the notary office for ID verification. This was made possible by legislation that recognises public-key encrypted documents and signatures as legally valid. This is one first step, and I don't see why this wouldn't be applied to things like contracts, invoices, wills, etc. Brazilian Notary and Register Association claims that one can even print as many copies of, say, your driver license as desired, though I don't see how this part would work..."
And how could the police officer validate the digital signature? He would only look at the printed paper and it would seem all right to him.
Digital signatures only work with digital documents. A digital signature is a hash of the entire document signed with a private key ( in this case the notary's key ). When you print the document, how could you check the signature? Should you scan it back so a computer could validate it again? How could you be sure that what I scanned would generate the same bits of the original? Actually, you can't! So we would always have a bad signature!
Ricardo da Silva Lima
Internet based services are way behind where they should be. Something as basic as timestamping is still having trouble getting of the ground after several years. Think of all the things that you should be able to accomplish, simply (although not necessarily freely) but just can't yet.
Brazilians will be able to digitalize any certified document and can make as many copies they want
Brazilian citizens, starting next year, will be able to get in a notary's office a floppy disk, or a CD-ROM, containing driver and identity cards, birth certificate and property deeds, guaranteed to be authentic, secure and legal. With the disk the citizen will be able to print as many electronic copies as many times as wanted, in the house, the office, or to send them over the Internet, respecting legal restrictions.
This is one of the simplifications that will be at the disposal of the Brazilian citizens in the contract that the Association of the Notaries and Registers of Brazil (ANOREG-BR) signs today, Monday, at 3:00, with the SERPRO (Federal Job of Data Processing), SGAN-Document 601-Section V, here in Brasilia (the Capital). To make a long story short, digital certificates could be distributed so that the notaries and registers will allow the electronic sending of any document, that will have the same attributes as the normal document. The trial version will have initial implantation in 10 notary's offices in Rio De Janeiro.
The information is from the president of Association of the Notaries and Registrations of Brazil (ANOREG-BR), clarifying that such modernization now is possible after the passing of the Provisional remedy that instituted Infrastructure of Brazilian Public Keys (ICP-Brazil), giving to legal validity digital documents and signatures.
According to the contract, it legalizes, the ANOREG-BR as the Authority Certifier of the notaries and Registers (notary's offices). SERPRO will initialize the creation of the digital certificates, giving the encrypted electronic form of documents, through a combination of numbers, letters and symbols, a guarantee (haha) that the source will be secure and bad guys cant crack into it.
For the creation of the Digital Certificate, the bearer generates two encrypted keys (a public and private one). The private key, used to sign documents digitally, will remain exclusively under control of the bearer of the certificate. The public key and the identification of the bearer define the content of the Digital Certificate. This, in turn, digitally is signed by the Authority Certifier, with process of identification for the bearer of the key will ALWAYS be made in notary's office.
Still according to Léa Portugal, the Digital Certificates sent by the ANOREG-BR will contain extensions that aim at to extend the degree of security and the reliability of the procedure practiced for the notary jobs and of the register. These extensions will allow, among other things, the users of the procedure to verify if the bearer of the certificate possess delegation of the public power to guarantee the act in question.
Innumerable advantages
With the implanted system, Luiz explains Gustavo Leão Ribeiro, president of the ANOREG-DF, a real estate deal will be able to be received from the notary's offices, through the Internet, and all at one time, all the necessary certificates to the finish the deal, with the documents that proves the inexistence of restrictions to the property, such as mortgage, non-availability, distrainment etc. will be available. In the same way, a bank that negotiates a loan with a customer will prove, electronically, the validity and the availability to guarantee the loan.
Says Luiz Gustavo: the advantage of the contract with the SERPRO is that the agency uses the "digital language" of the government and that the digital documents generated by the notary jobs and registrars will enjoy of the same level of acceptance that the normal documents generated for the public management (the paper kind). Securitywise, it definitively guarantees that any attempt to alter the text or signature of the digital certificates will invalidate the document. Moreover, the SERPRO will always guarantee, to the notary acts and of public registers, the same technology, security and reliability supplied the diverse organizations of the public management, from the Presidency of the Republic.
The private keys, clarified the president of the ANOREG-DF, remains exclusively under control of the bearer of the certificate, and its security can be magnified with the use of intelligent cards (smart cards), that still can be improved with diverse biological-related readers (fingerprint, voice, retina etc.).
For more information:
Assessorship of the Press of the ANOREG-BR - Luis Joca (Texto and Cia - Consultant in Communication: (61) 322.1675/1408 and 9983.3589)
Assessorship Technique - Arnaldo Viegas de Lima: (21) 9874,4997
Dra. Léa Portugal, president of the ANOREG-BR: (61) 9984-5554
Dr. Luiz Gustavo Leão Ribeiro: (61) 9985.2396