The funny thing what The Guardian and others do not get is the crucial difference between a “signature machine” and a digital signature. They treat both equally fake, even though a digital signature is a cryptographic secure way to proof someone’s identity, where the signature machine just puts ink on a paper.
But that’s how laws work in a lot of countries. Ink on the paper is accepted, digital signatures not. Now have fun proving if a signature was drawn by hand or machine.
I don’t think The Guardian is wrong here, see this passage from the article:
Comer has sent 16 letters to former Biden White House officials requesting transcribed interviews, NBC said. Metadata analysis showed that all appeared to be signed with a digitally inserted signature.
Further letters requesting testimony from the White House physician Dr Kevin O’Connor and Anthony Bernal, a senior aide to former first lady Jill Biden, were also signed with digital images, NBC said.
He did not use cryptographic signatures, but images of his written signature, which I think is pretty similar to using an autopen (albeit probably much easier to detect)
The whole purpose of a digital signature is to provide a legally verigiable signature. It’s still being defined in some countries, but in US and Canada its very specifically defined.
Autopen seems to available to rich people as needed, but if the wikipedia article is accurate, a form of autopen has been available to US presidents dating back to Thomas Jefferson. I’d be surprised if the legal minds haven’t defined the legal use of autopen somewhere.
The funny thing what The Guardian and others do not get is the crucial difference between a “signature machine” and a digital signature. They treat both equally fake, even though a digital signature is a cryptographic secure way to proof someone’s identity, where the signature machine just puts ink on a paper.
But that’s how laws work in a lot of countries. Ink on the paper is accepted, digital signatures not. Now have fun proving if a signature was drawn by hand or machine.
I don’t think The Guardian is wrong here, see this passage from the article:
He did not use cryptographic signatures, but images of his written signature, which I think is pretty similar to using an autopen (albeit probably much easier to detect)
The whole purpose of a digital signature is to provide a legally verigiable signature. It’s still being defined in some countries, but in US and Canada its very specifically defined. Autopen seems to available to rich people as needed, but if the wikipedia article is accurate, a form of autopen has been available to US presidents dating back to Thomas Jefferson. I’d be surprised if the legal minds haven’t defined the legal use of autopen somewhere.