e-conveyancing

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 10:00 31/03/2001 +0100, David Swarbrick wrote:
>
>
>--
>David Swarbrick, Solicitor
>david.swarbrick@wrigleyclaydon.com www.swarb.co.uk Tel 0161 785 3527 Mob
>0779 681 0373
>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk
>> [mailto:ukcrypto-admin@chiark.greenend.org.uk]On Behalf Of Nicholas Bohm
>> Sent: 30 March 2001 10:35
>> To: ukcrypto@chiark.greenend.org.uk
>> Subject: RE: e-conveyancing
>>
>>
>> At 06:42 30/03/2001 +0100, David Swarbrick wrote:
>> >
>> >It is quite unmeasurable, but I have little trust in those who
>> say they can
>> >tell when signatures are forgeries. As an area of expertise there is no
>> >proper profesional standard that I would pat any great credit to.
>>
>> Finding good document examiners may be difficult, I accept.  But it isn't
>> difficult to carry out blind testing of document examiners, and the
>> academic literature has a good deal of material (briefly summarised in the
>> paper I cited).  The main flaw is that there is no way of knowing how good
>> the forgers were as compared with those operating "professionally".
>
>As always, the logic is what drives me. You simply can not measure how good
>they are?

You can test forgers against document examiners.  That tells you something
about those you test.  

You have some chance of getting good document examiners to participate
(support for research, kudos, money) since they have nothing much to lose
(unless they're shown up as no good, but those are the ones you're happy to
keep out anyway).

Getting the best forgers to take part is likely to be much more difficult:
they can earn more elsewhere, and don't want to make themselves well known.

>> Have you come across cases where purported signatories convincingly
>> repudiated documents which examiners said were genuine?  Such forgeries as
>> I have come across have been obvious at first sight, let alone under a
>> microscope.
>
>No, but that experience would come to one only very rarely anyway.

I agree.  I think disputes over paper signatures are quite rare, and this
suggests to me that most forgeries, even those that succeed at first go,
are later recognised for what they are.  This, if right, supports
confidence in paper signatures as a protection for the purported signer,
who will rarely get saddled with liability for a forgery that has deceived
a relier.

But if a digital signature deceives a relier, the purported signer could be
in considerable trouble.

Regards

Nicholas

Salkyns, Great Canfield,
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