Re: legalxml-enotary icon; commission number

[Arshad Noor <arshad.noor@strongauth.com>]

I wasn't expecting feedback quite so quickly, and certainly not
from outside the TC, but thank you, nonetheless, Gerard.

You make an interesting point.  There are ways in which such
"attacks" can be mitigated.  What would need to be done by the
TC is to come up with a list of attacks that are possible, 
determine the probability of the risk and then come up with ways
to mitigate the risk that are acceptable given the "mathematical
expectation" (loss multiplied with probability) of the outcome 
of the attack.  But, the choice you represent is a valid option
that must be discussed by the TC.

By the words licensing scheme for the visual representation, I
didn't imply that there might be a cost (other than the cost of
membership at OASIS).  The OASIS TC, Member Section and/or the
Board may choose to license it at no cost, subject to acceptance
of the terms of use of the visual representation.  But that is
not a decision that the TC alone might make.  OASIS' General
Counsel is copied on this e-mail; he probably knows what OASIS
can or cannot do in this regard; but its a decision that needs
to be made only AFTER the TC has determined that these work-items
are worthy of being worked on.

WRT commission numbers in Vermont, could you send me a sample of
the Commission Numbers used in your state?  If numbers are not 
used at all, how is one Notary Public distinguished from another
if they happen to have the same name and live in the same county?

Thanks for the comment.

Arshad Noor
StrongAuth, Inc.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gerard Ashton" <ashtongj@comcast.net>
To: "arshad noor" <arshad.noor@strongauth.com>
Sent: Friday, August 1, 2008 10:30:11 AM (GMT-0800) America/Los_Angeles
Subject: legalxml-enotary icon; commission number

In an email posted at
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/legalxml-enotary/200808/msg00000.html
you wrote:

"I believe there are two important items of work that this TC must
contemplate producing along with the XML Schema Definition (XSD) standard.
These are . . . Visual representation marks for eNotarized documents that
are standardized across applications."

Such a visual mark could potentially be used to deceive naive users
that a document has a valid notarization when it has not been tested.
I think a better scheme would be for a verification application to
invite the user (at the time the application is installed)
to create his/her own visual representation that would
be unique to that user, so the user will know that the notarization
has been checked by an application under his/her control.
Alternatively, an organization that is mainly interested in verifying
documents that come from different organizations could adopt
an organization-wide visual representation.

Any licensing scheme for a visual representation is likely
to create resistance in the open source community.

On another topic, I notice the proposal requires at least one
notary commission number. The notary commissions in some states,
such as Vermont, do not bear any numbers.

Gerard Ashton
Professional Engineer and Notary Public, Vermont