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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."
Ok, so what's the betting that these 'chip card signers' get used as coffee mats by 95% of of the people who they've been given to? :)
Just last week I set up my life insurance,
and they used the chip in my bank card as a digital signature (together with the code).
The nice lady all explained me on how the Belgian State now accepts these digital signatures and how great that was.
Mind you, that I reside in a farmer community, I wonder how the farmers react ?
Greetings.
My other sig is Funny.
The German government just get it. First they send 52-page colour booklets promoting open source to all businesses in the country, then they give a large sum of money to add more security and encryption in mutt and KMail, and now this!
... is people. How many people are going to go for a dump, leaving their keycard on their desk? Practically everyone where I work wanders off at some point leaving their PC logged with their (Notes) mail running. This could lead to hours of fun. Similarly, passwords/phrases get shared, borrowed etc.
Unless you use biometrics (I don't generally leave my fingers on my desk when I go to lunch), the stupid-factor will always play a part. The legal status of digital signatures will only really be clarified when the first case comes to court with the defense: "someone else must have used my key".
(OT) Oh, and would people please learn to spell "definite". It's like "finite" with a "de" on the front (quickly checks for typos).
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
CNN incorrectly reported the prices as yen. The should be Euro
Not ¥ but €
I bet lots of Japanese wish that ¥60 was close to $53....
(This is just like the use of duel instead of dual, when they asked Nicole Kidman about her dual citizenship. CNN has really gone downhill.)
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
You know Germany seems to be one of the technological world leaders. 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. 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. What I want to know is: who are the politicians making all of these progressive decisions and what affect are they having in the EU Parliament? Are other European countries following Germany's lead in these type of issues? I know that German business law strongly favors big business, are there any other laws or policy that a liberal would take issue with in Germany? What is the state of Linux use in Germany? 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_:).
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
The only way to be sure is to raise the hashed message to the proper power modulo p*q in your head.
Here in the U.S., for me anyway, the most common reason for me to have to sign something is when I pay with a credit card, yet when I purchase something online, no signature is required. This could be great if used by e-commerce companies to verify the person making the purchase is indeed who they say they are.
Slightly off topic, but why are the currencies given in Japanese yen in the article if it is hosted on an American site and about Germany?
The future isn't what it used to be.
Surely the 'legal weight' will be determined by the courts: It's only a matter of time before somebody signs something (or appears to), and then denies any involvment. Excuses (true or not) of "My card was stolen", "They made me tell them the key", "I don't know what you're talking about" will presumably be uttered (in german). Cryptogram has covered the problem that "the key isnt the person" in the past.
If the first 10 cases all end up with courts deicing that there isn't enough evidence that the person did actually "sign" the document, there surely won't be much legal weight? A paper signature means little if there is sufficient doubt about it's authenticity, I dont see how that's going to change here.
As an aside, I like the last line of the CNN piece:
Bitkom called instead for a "citizens' card," with chip and electronic signature, for all Germans.
Yeah Baby! I can't see anything bad happening down that road!
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
Keeping track of 200k signatures will be a logistical nightmare? What the hell are you talking about? How many millions of credit and debit cards exist in the world? How many does a single bank issue? Cripe man. As for signing documents...that is just encryption. You have your public key off somewhere and keep the private key on a smart card. Your smart card would have an info file about you and contain your public and private keys (the private key being protected by a password or biometric key). You'd sign the document and add the signature as an attachment to a document. Somebody would get it and grab your public key from something as basic as an HTTP server and verify that the document they received was as you sent it. Easy to crack no. If you're using 128-bit encryption you're pretty set though it'd be even better to use larger keyspaces. Dnet's RC5-64 has been on since 1998 and still hasn't found the key. They're pumping through millions of keys per day. So easy to crack, no. Hard to maintain, no.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
According to the article's illustration, the Germans will digitally sign their names by writing a long, free-floating string of binary in the air with an ordinary pencil. Evidently the technology being used is both more advanced and more bizarre than anything I've ever seen.
G'damn, but this is a tough issue (I'm speaking generally here) How do you:
(1) Insure that no one can fake your identity
(2) Insure that no one can conglomerate data from your identity
It seems to me that both (1) and (2) are desireable, yet mutually exlusive. How do you insure anonimity with a definite ID? These two issues have never been smashed together with such power before. Digital technology gives us the possibility for either (1) or (2), but can it ever give us both? Are they mutually exclusive? Is it either anarchy or buttonhole ID facism?
.. Personaly I would opt for Anarchy for myself, and button-hole facism for everybody else.. (for safety's sake of course).. How 'bout you?
Starsucks
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.
If the encryption is not strong enough to deter the majority of fraudsters, then I'd steer clear.
I'd hope they use some kind of pin code in addition to the "chip card". I also hope you can cancel a "chip card" if it gets stolen...
If someone fraudulently uses your digital signature that better not be binding!
...after all?
I know you americans don't have ID cards, but we have them in Portugal and allways had, so we don't tend to consider them as forms of major control, even though they are.
The point here is that if you loose your wallet and someone gets ahold of your ID card, you can be in a lot of trouble if it gets misused.
I have heard of stories from people I know that lost their ID and found themselves being chased by stores that claimed people had bought stuff there, paid the first entrance fee and never paid the rest. And that is the least that you can expect, even if you report your ID being missed 5 minutes after you loose it.
We, at least, don't have that many legal mechanisms to prevent situations like those, but I would bet it's a matter of time until there is a case of stolen digital ID.
The German government, by giving incentive to open source applications like encription and security are aware of these problems. So if they actualy exist? They existed well before things went digital, so you can expect a few cases of stolen ID before things get smooth.
Nice move here in Europe, btw. First GEANT, now this, really love the way things are popping up after a lot of foundation work.
Lay
Weakly typed languages will bring us armageddon
Lay
Weakly typed languages will bring us armageddon
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.
So, like all you are aware of, citizens from European countries have phisical and economic mobility troughout the member states. And we have a common currency now too. So, since Belgium already has a system like this too, the next logical step would be to implement this troughout the whole Europe, which I bet has already been tought.
Any other European country that has a system like this? What are the chances of all these systems being interchangeable?
It's nice that a government from another member state can digitaly ID you... isn't it? :-)
Lay
Weakly typed languages will bring us armageddon
Lay
Weakly typed languages will bring us armageddon
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.
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
Everyone who's praising the German government on being all tech-savvy and forward-thinking and blah-blah-blah should first read Bruce Schneier's thoughts on the subject: Why Digital Signatures Are Not Signatures.
In a nutshell, he says this: Cryptography can do quite a bit to guarantee that a given signature came from a given computer. It can do absolutely nothing to guarantee that that signature represents the person it purports to represent. To quote Schneier: "The mathematics of cryptography, no matter how strong, cannot bridge the gap between me and my computer."
It's all good and well for governments to embrace new technology, but only if they don't cause major fuckups in the process.
Do domain names matter?
But I feel that often the risks and costs of the old system are not given as much weight.
Let's take an example. Some years back, an argument raged in my community about a proposed tunnel under a fjord. The tunnel would allow people to get to the other side in 6 minutes instead of following the outline of the fjord for 45 minutes on a narrow, winding, often steep road.
The risks of the the new system, the tunnel, got a lot of press. We were treated to many horrifying predictions, each fit for a disaster movie. The proponents of the tunnel pointed out that while the road does not make a good disaster movie, people regularly die in car crashes on it.
My observasion is that this argument got considerably less recognition than it should have if people had viewed the issue rationally.
In light of this, can we perhaps enrich the discussion on this particular new system (digital signatures) by identifying the risks and costs of the old system (handwritten signatures on paper).
I can see a few.
1) Signatures can be forged. It takes talent, skill and effort to do it well, but only rarely do you need to do it well, because the signature is rarely verified by anyone who actually knows how to do it. (It's not always verified at all. I saw a bogus check hanging in a store once, signed Donald Duck or something like that. The clerk had actually accepted this check as payment.)
2) The piece of paper needs to be in the same place as the signer. This can't always be arranged easily and sometimes people accept the dangerous alternative of doing business with no signature at all (or a weaker version of the digital signature, the pin code).
3) Handwriting recognition can't be automated (or has the software gotten good enough?), with the same results as in point 2 (think ATMs).
I'm thinking of things like online shopping and tax returns at the same time here, but to get a clear picture the applications of signatures should probably be categorized. Also note that I haven't decided in favour of digital signatures. I just want to promote this idea of mine that we should give equal weight to the risks and costs of the system already in place as to the risks and costs of the system being proposed.
Fuck the system? Nah, you might catch something.
Unfortunately, the article misses the main point: Germany has been trying to build a PKI for governmental use since 1997 or so (when legislation was passed to make documents carrying some types of digital signatures equivalent to paper documents).
However, the 1997 law features very high requirements for CAs and the actual implementations of digital signing. Partly because of the high security standards (which look good on paper, but fails in practice--a certified solution was successfully attacked by compromising the hosting general purpose computer), and partly because of incompatibilities, acceptance of this type of signatures was extremely low.
The new digital signature law introduces a new kind of digital signature with lower security standards, and which does not necessarily require additional hardware. Although this is less secure (key theft might be possible), this approach seems to be practical.
At the same time, the compatibility problems are addressed in the Sphinx framework, where KMail and GnuPG are enhanced so that they can exchange messages with other Sphinx-compatible clients.
If I'm not mistaken, the German federal government announced recently that it would promote the use of the low security digital signature in non-critical areas of the federal government. I think this is a good idea; even a digital signature based entirely on software (and not on some smart card which fully implements an assymmetric crypto algorithm) provides more authentication than a simple phone call, and certainly much more non-repudiation (even more than an oral consultation). And this time, the rollout might actually succeed, if the clients get ready soon.
In Germany everybody has a national id card, and I have never heard anybody complain about it. On the contrary, after WTC many people wondered that the US doesnt have one. The concept of not having an ID sounds very strange to most people here.
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.
What about forged signatures?
xxxxxxxxxx O xxxxxxxxxx H xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx W xxxxxxxxxx E xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx.
Actually, I'm not done yet. I just wanted to say that we're moving towards a moneyless, paperless society. One day, and it might not be so far off in the distant future, there will be no money, and all documents will be electronic and signed with digital signatures. All your personal information will be stored on a so-called "chip card." This will be a sort of global identification card, which will simultaneously serve as:
With tiny storage medium such as microdrives reaching capacities of a gigabyte or more, such a card is not far off. It could even come from the government already in a nice waterproof protective wallet. After a few years go by, they'll start implanting this technology in peoples' bodies, and sell you on the added conveniences, such as monitoring of your life functions, the impossibility of getting kidnapped, huge reduction in crimes, etc. That way, Big Brother can really be in control of your life.
Ok, now I'm done.
xxxxxxxxxx O xxxxxxxxxx H xxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx W xxxxxxxxxx E xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx L xxxxxxxxxx.