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Well, but does it? How do you know? Voting obviously is the biggest problem, but other uses have similar problems. Especially in terms of how you could ever fi

Well, but does it? How do you know? Voting obviously is the biggest problem, but other uses have similar problems. Especially in terms of how you could ever figure out if it's actually not working well. You say that it serves other purposes quite well--how do you actually know that? Is it just because noone has demonstrated yet that, I dunno, the smartcards have a backdoor that is actively being used to sign stuff in other people's names? How would you know if that were the case? How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign some document when they ask you to explain how it comes that their computer tells them that you signed it?

markdown 10y ago
> How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign some document when they ask you to explain how it comes that their computer tells them that you signed it? How would you convince a judge that someone was holding a gun to your head as you signed a document? How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign something when they ask you to explain how it comes that the signature on the document matches yours exactly?
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
  The thing is that both of those scenarios are things judges can be expected to understand perfectly well, and have some clue how to approach evaluating the claim, and also, in both cases, there generally is a reasonable risk that any such attempts leave some form of evidence, deterring people from even trying it. With a smartcard, there is nothing of that sort. It's just a bunch of electronic numbers and "the blackbox says you signed it!", there isn't really anything there to investigate, plus judges can in general be expected to not have even the slightest clue how to evaluate claims about IT security, so more than likely you'll end up with a situation where judges simply accept the government-mandated assumption that what the blackbox says is to be trusted. It's the same fundamental problem as with electronic elections: The actual process is necessarily completely removed from human perception/observation, and therefore ultimately must be trusted blindly if it's not to be rejected outright.

markdown 10y ago

> How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign some document when they ask you to explain how it comes that their computer tells them that you signed it? How would you convince a judge that someone was holding a gun to your head as you signed a document? How would you convince a judge that you didn't sign something when they ask you to explain how it comes that the signature on the document matches yours exactly?

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago
The thing is that both of those scenarios are things judges can be expected to understand perfectly well, and have some clue how to approach evaluating the claim, and also, in both cases, there generally is a reasonable risk that any such attempts leave some form of evidence, deterring people from even trying it. With a smartcard, there is nothing of that sort. It's just a bunch of electronic numbers and "the blackbox says you signed it!", there isn't really anything there to investigate, plus judges can in general be expected to not have even the slightest clue how to evaluate claims about IT security, so more than likely you'll end up with a situation where judges simply accept the government-mandated assumption that what the blackbox says is to be trusted. It's the same fundamental problem as with electronic elections: The actual process is necessarily completely removed from human perception/observation, and therefore ultimately must be trusted blindly if it's not to be rejected outright.