[8097] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Schneier: Why Digital Signatures are not Signatures (was Re: CRYPTO-GRAM, November 15, 2000)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dan Geer)
Sun Nov 19 12:16:21 2000
Message-Id: <200011191548.KAA08036@world.std.com>
To: cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 17 Nov 2000 10:58:17 EST."
<Pine.LNX.4.21.0011171057020.13139-100000@ultra.gawth.com>
Date: Sun, 19 Nov 2000 10:48:37 -0500
From: Dan Geer <geer@world.std.com>
> As the US banking system (and especially the bank clearinghouses controlled
> by the Federal Reserve system) has gone electronic, all the banks I know of
> have stopped bothering to verify the signatures on checks, and similarly
> those on credit- and debit-card drafts. Getting them to start using digital
> signatures would be a big improvement over the current wide-open situation.
As compared to the State of Oregon which has now gone over
to keeping a digitized image of the ink signature of every
registered voter for visual verification, the better to run
its all-absentee election process, or for that matter FedEx,
UPS, and numerous P.O.S. terminals all of which have copies
of my hand signature, like it or not.
--dan
