---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2002 20:12:45 -0400 From: Ian Grigg <iang@systemics.com> To: eugen@leitl.org, h.rzepa@ic.ac.uk Cc: Digital Bearer Settlement List <dbs@philodox.com> Subject: Re: Digital Signatures "R. A. Hettinga" wrote:
From: Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> Comments welcome. I'll forward them to the list and the author.
Slightly off beat this one, but you might be interested in the increasing use/acceptability of digital signatures to sign legal documents.
Token usage only, AFAIK. They are somewhat constrained by poor assumptions by the security industry. Check out this paper: http://faculty.smu.edu/jwinn/shocking-truth.htm
The technicalities are simple. Firstly you acquire a digital certificate from Verisign (about $150 and install it into your email program or into eg the your profile of the Windows operating system.
Why would you do that? Isn't your signature good enough as it is? I'm curious. When I sign documents, I don't pay $150 for permission. Why did you need to do that?
I would be interested to hear if indeed their use has now become common (they have been around for more than 3 years) or whether indeed their use is still very rare indeed.
For the very reasons that you describe, digital signatures in general usage are as rare as hens' teeth. In specific applications they are quite usable; our own applications hit 6 figures a while back. But don't expect them to reach into general usage until the browsers are fixed to accept open signing keys. -- iang chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)