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German Government Introduces Digital Signatures
bertvl writes: "From this
article on CNN: Germany's federal government is introducing electronic signatures for its employees, a step it hopes will help make the security procedure generally accepted in the country. More than 200,000 employees of ministries and agencies will be able to sign electronic documents using a chip card with an encrypted key, giving them the same legal weight as paper documents with a handwritten signature, the federal Cabinet said in a statement Thursday."
Good security should consists of three parts:
Now it seems the German government has two out of the three (know+have), which is one (or two!) better than most of the world. Now all they need are retinal scanners, and they're set!
Like I said, it may not be a Good Thing® they end up with, but whatever it is... it's a lot closer to "secure" than anything else.
It is not really a innovative step by the German government alone. All EU member states have to transform the EU directive on e-commerce into national law. According to the directive the member states have to make sure that most contracts (very few exceptions) can be closed online. The German government just tries to extend this rule to public law.
Line 9: Argument of type SIGNATURE expected.
What I want to know is: [...] What is the state of Linux use in Germany?
Germany is home to an awful lot of linux development. SuSE is from Germany, as an example. The government is also active, sponsoring the GnuPG pgp-like developement. Top government officials (like "secretary of state") opening the LinuxTag for 2 or 3 years in a row now.
There's a lot of debate currently on whether the Reichstag (the German parliament) should switch to linux. It's kinda funny, even people from the same party are disagreeing, one proclaiming the gospel of linux, the other (being half sponsored by Redmond) denouncing it as a threath to Germany's software industry as a whole :-)
The best tip is to look at heise. They also've got english news now. Look at what's going on there. That 'heise' publishes two of Europe's best-regarded computer magazines, one for home-use (c't), one for professional use (iX).
Reinout
Reinout van Rees
WRONG! Digitial signatures were equal to written ones in Germany long before the EU directive. IIRC germany was actually the first state in the world to pass such laws.
Who do you think was the strongest supporter of the EU-directive? The german security requirements were actually much harder than those now demanded by the EU. Many big companies, who had already invested in the needed infrastructure (setting up an CA in a secure building, etc.) were pretty much pissed after the laws got relaxed with the EU-directive.
The new thing now is, that the german government is trying to push the use of digital signatures, because the adoption has been really low.
Not that I would agree with your generally praise of germany (although it sounds good :-)), but in this point you were right.
Germany passed digital signature laws in 1997 already,
being the first state in the world to do so.
You know Germany seems to be one of the technological world leaders.
They're certainly no losers, but the general public's attitude has been rather anti-tech these past years.
They just decided to phase out all nuclear power in favor of wind power by the year's end and it looks like they'll do it.
Says who? Never heard about that one. Wouldn't be possible anyway, there's by far not enough wind power available (or to be made available) to come even close to replacing nuclear power, and certainly not by the end of the year. Sure, the green party hates anything that's got "nuclear" in it's name, but that's hardly rational. If I'd got moderator points, I'd have modded you a troll for this point.
The acceptance of digital signitures is a huge step in helping the internet reach its full potential for changing the way we live our lives. Germany is taking this first step.
Maybe. It's unfortunate, though, that they chose a system that's already been broken. IIRC they took quite some heat for it from clued guys, but they went ahead anyway.
What is the state of Linux use in Germany?
AFAIK, it's one of the highest levels on this planet. SuSE's from Nuernberg, and AFAIK they make more money than Red Hat.
I ask all this because I'm looking at an offer for a research position at the Max Planck Institute in Munich (I'm sorry _Munchen_:).
Good luck there.
They don't check on normal transactions, only in special cases (very large/unusual transactions or account transfers).
I remember as a student that we had a bank account that was in name of the dorm. One of us, the house-elder was in charge of it. This is a pretty common construction in dorms in the Netherlands.
In our dorm we had this one guy who did the finances. He had lived in there for almost 12 years. He had paid the phone bills and the beer bills all from our account. When he moved out, we wanted to transfer the account to another dorm member. Only then we found out that the account was still under control from someone who moved out 12 years ago. In the course of the 12 years, all payments (about 40 every month) had been made with an illegal signature!
So I'm pretty sure that most signatures are never checked. <grin>
the pun is mightier than the sword
You're certainly right, but the article was about laws in germany.
Germany has had some historical autocratic/statist leanings and nationalism or the belief in the state has entertained some moments of popularity.
50 years ago. Today nationalism and especially patriotism is not a very common phenomenon, and, compared to the US (or france, or..), the majority of germans are not patriotic at all. People watch movies like 'Pearl Habour' or people hanging US flags after 9/11 with disbelief. If a german would make a movie like this or put a german flag in a car people would call him right wing extremist...
But there is a certain amount of trust in the state and government that americans seem to lack though.
I suspect the truth of it is that having a national ID card is useful to the government, but often in a good way.
Why? It's not like there is somebody at every corner asking for your identity. Actually, in my whole life, I have been asked for my identity card by local authorities inside germany exactly once. And that was because a friend and me were driving next to a congress hall where a summit of european heads of state was taking place. There is no 'tracking' of people, if the police wants to know your identity they will find it out whether you have a identity card or not. Usually you need the id if you, for example, open a bank account, rent a car or things like this. In all these cases the companies already know your identity anyway and the id card is used as a proof.