[legalxml-enotary] Draft Minutes January 21, 2003 meeting

[John Messing <jmessing@law-on-line.com>]

eNotary TC Minutes 
Teleconference, January 21, 2004 

Present: 
Eric E. Cohen, Secretary and individual member 
Pieter Kasselman, Baltimore Technologies 
John Messing, Chair and individual member 
Ram Austryjak Moskovitz, VeriSign 
Manoj Srivastava, Infomosaic Corporation 

Agenda item: 
To discuss the following proposal (http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-enotary/200212/msg00007.html)- 
"It is proposed that the e-Notary TC identify various registration procedures and technical aspects within registration procedures. In addition the e-Notary TC can provide a rating system for the technical aspects and procedures. This rating system will allow a weight to be attached to a digital credential and allows a verifier to make a judgement on the quality of the digital credential. In addition a method for annotating this weighting to a document witnessed or signed with a given credential may be established." 

Discussion: 

The group discussed the proposal, how it related to the existing charter (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/legalxml-enotary/charter.shtml), and how it furthered the subject of traditional notarizations in the paper world. One view was presented it would be better for the TC to focus on enotarizations in the presence of a notary, which could be of more direct use in fashioning practical application tools for the existing body of registered notaries. Such tools had a practical advantage in offering something to those who arguably needed it first, thus leveraging the present legal system for paper notarizations in a transition towards electronic authentications involving a notary. Under this line of reasoning, the proposal was misguided as to the goal and proper purposes of the TC. 
 
An opposing view in support of the proposal was also presented. It looked to machine processes for enotarization as conceivably replacing present-day notarizations in the presence of a notary for many ordinary legal purposes. A signature in the paper world binds an identity to document; a notary in the paper world adds an additional layer of trust such that the signature that was notarized is considered self-authenticating; i.e., not requiring additional proof of signer identity before being considered as genuine in a court of law. The tools of the paper world were crude in comparison with the granularity offered by digital technologies. With digital technologies, an individual is introduced to a network by a human registrar, who issues a digital ID. (There could be instances of self-issued digital ID's much as there are self-signed certificates, but these are not considered particularly important to the discussion.) 
 
The processes and methods of a third party to establish identity before the digital ID is issued is of extreme importance to relying parties. Such processes, if proper for the purpose, can avoid having to check identity each time a notarized (self-proving) document is necessary. 
 
In a PKI, such processes and methods are usually described by legalistic certificate practice statements and enforced by machine readable certificate policies. If instead they were based on agreed upon and published standards  that were expressed in short hand ways, they could populate elements or attributes expressed in XML. Using an example of an X-509 digital certificate, it is possible to express certain processes by a shorthand color descriptor, such as "blue" or "orange" and place this in a non-critical extension. A blue certificate could be useful for executing an electronic mortgage obligation whereas an orange one would only be good for small value transactions below, say, $25.00. The difference in value of the certificates is significant though both are X-509, v.3. Over the term of a mortgage, which could be for 30 years, and its satisfaction, which could be in perpetuity, electronic signature technologies are bound to evolve. In this evolution, it should suffice for a repository of legal document

 
In the present environment, the proposal was also attractive on an economic level. It could result in certificates being viewed as interchangeable commodities by relying parties. The result could be increased use of digital certificates for different types of commercial transactions. 
 
There was debate on the best course to take, with three expressing support for the proposal, though no formal vote was taken. 

We will consider these options and discuss them at our next call, February 4, 2003 at 9:00 PST. We will have calls on alternate Tuesdays. Please contact the Chair if you are unable to make the calls. 

Once the group has finalized its short/mid-term direction, we will seek to interest members of other groups to actively take part; the existing PKI Forum members may wish to take part in this effort also. John Messing will contact Terry Leahy, the chair of the PKI TC, to discuss a representative of eNotary attending an upcoming PKI TC face to face meeting in March planned to take place near Islip, NY. 

Respectfully submitted, 

Eric E. Cohen