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."

Comments

Logistics

[JohnHegarty]

Will keeping track of 200,000 signatures be a logistical nightmare. Plus I am sure it will be easily cracked by someone, and then there will be fake documents flying around, but now they will have legal status.

Re:Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

<RANT>

I have a real problem seeing the Germans get out of Nuclear any time soon. In some states like Bavaria a major part of the Electricity comes from nuclear. It would be a 20 year+ project to realise it. If they are lucky the Current Govt. will manage to close one or two nuclear plants IF they get reelected. If they don't the Christ Democrats which are ultra conservatives who think GW Bush's enviromental policies are to compromising will scrap the whole thing.

Now that I have lived here for a year I can say that this chip thing sounds really German, they have a compulsive need to regulate everything. About the only thing you do not need to fill out a form and get a liscense to do yet is to break wind allthough that will soon require a pollution liscense. The law favours big business allright and this to the point that it can take upto 10 working days to cache a checque. Basically the Law favours Banks and Businessess at the Expense of the consumer at every turn. If the Christ Democrats come to power Germany will probably become the worlds first country with a Genetic finger print embedded in the national ID, and a free for Corporations to use Genetic database. Y'know for "Risk Management of employees". All in all the Germans should thank god the Conservatives were not in power when the WTC strike happened. The plans for new Security measures the Social democrats came up with were bad enaugh I do not even want to imagine what the Christ Democrats would have cooked up.

</RANT>