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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."
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
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
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.
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.
...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.
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.