EU Draft Digital Signature Directive

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 12:01 PM 8/20/1998 +0100, David Swarbrick wrote:

>I suspect that funamental issues as to the nature of identity on-line
>will have to be answered. Communication with pals is ok, but surely the
>point of public key encryption is that more becomes possible. It just
>may be that the overheads of key management will always make general
>secure communication impractical. If so, Nigel's 'prompters' can sleep
>soundly, knowing that only crooks, terrorists, and paedophiles will
>_actually_ ever make regular use of encryption, and irrespective of what
>regulations exist.

The nature of identity is no doubt a difficult problem, but it is
independent of the means of communication.

The problems of commerce at a distance have existed since the development
of mail order in the 18th and 19th centuries, and have been overcome by the
banking system (first letters of credit and bills of exchange, now credit
cards).  It is a mistake to suppose that just because the internet provides
a new and rapid medium for communication (a bit like the telephone, telex
and fax), we must necessarily invent a whole new infrastructure of trust
protocols in order to use it.  This is fortunate, because until we have a
lot of practical experience, we won't know how to do the job properly, or
even what it really requires.

The greatest value of the proposed EU directive lies in the constraints it
tries to impose on EU member states from unnecessary interference with
electronic commerce for the purpose of milking "law enforcement" benefits.

	Regards,

		Nicholas Bohm

Salkyns, Great Canfield,
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PGP RSA 1024 bit public key ID: 0x08340015.  Fingerprint:
9E 15 FB 2A 54 96 24 37  98 A2 E0 D1 34 13 48 07
PGP DSS/DH 1024/3072 public key ID: 0x899DD7FF.  Fingerprint:
5248 1320 B42E 84FC 1E8B  A9E6 0912 AE66 899D D7FF