3 ms·

Yes. Fraud. It makes a document look like it existed in physical form. Imagine for example a purchase agreement for a house that was physically scanned. You cou

Yes. Fraud. It makes a document look like it existed in physical form. Imagine for example a purchase agreement for a house that was physically scanned. You could change the signature to a different name and then make it look like it was original. I am not asserting the authors intent is to facilitate fraud or there isn’t any other practical use, but let’s not be naive and act like fraud isn’t a likely use. Before you downvote at least respond with why you think my analysis is wrong.

bluebarbet 4mo ago
It's not that you're wrong, but the fact that it would be fraud is farcical and needs to be challenged. My bank demands that I perform this ridiculous hoop-jumping. Like others here, I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease (a couple of times they complained so I tweaked the algo a bit and they were happy). The whole situation is beyond absurd. It's security theater in place of security.
- digitaltrees 4mo ago
  This is fraud. Your are passing off a document as authentic by misleading use of visual artifacts to make the origin of the document appear different than reality. Just because you don’t like the security theatre does make it acceptable to misrepresent the origin of a document to satisfy the security requirements. And I gave a specific example, slipping a page into a document that wasn’t in the original and making it look like it belongs by making it look scanned. Imagine I changed the purchase price on your home to 10% of its value rather than the original agreed price and took it to court to enforce the purchase. This tech would make that appear more credible.
  - falsemyrmidon 4mo ago
    You could just as easily edit it, print it, then scan it again. This tech doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't already do. The real problem is that written signatures are a poor form of authentication.
    - digitaltrees 4mo ago
      Just because there is an alternative path doesn’t mean this path won’t equally facilitate fraudulent acts. That is an example of a flawed argument named false equivalence. And it ignores that the this library eliminates the friction of printing, and enables the ability to scale the process.
    - SoftTalker 4mo ago
      Everyone is overlooking the reality that multiple parties have a copy of the documents, and a judge is not going to believe that the seller agreed to 10% of market value when they claim otherwise and they have a document backing it up and so does their lawyer and so does their real estate agent. And you are going to be charged with a crime if you attempt something like this.
      - digitaltrees 4mo ago
        There are plenty of examples of a single set of documents with no corroborating documents. In fact, when I was a lawyer for Lehman in 2008 most mortgage transfers were a line in a spreadsheet not a legal document. Many wills have only a single copy that was kept in a safe deposit box. I could go on and on.
        SoftTalker 4mo ago
        The fact remains that altering a photocopied or faxed copy of a document has been trivially easy for decades and yet it's not really a problem in real life, because it's a criminal act to do so and present it as authentic.
        digitaltrees 4mo ago
        Which is easier to do this 10,000 times a print and scan work flow or a python script that calls this library :). I own home care agencies in 13 states and in the early years had to collect timesheets with physical signatures for medical billing. I know the work involved in printing, collecting, scanning, organizing and retaining/archiving physical signatures at scale. We lost real money when signatures weren’t collected or were lost because there were times we couldn’t collect a replacement for various reasons. I then built the digital system to collect signatures and had to get legislation passed to make them legally valid. We were literally blocked for several years because digital signatures were not permitted. So this isn’t a hypothetical I am throwing out just to make an argument and be annoying.
  - bluebarbet 4mo ago
    An interesting take that reveals differing moral bases. As a preamble, I have zero moral qualms about technically committing fraud in order to access my own money (almost nobody would). More important, I choose not to respect a law that upholds an insecure and broken system. A parallel with traffic regulations come to mind: as a cyclist I regularly break rules when I consider that they do not best serve my safety. All things being equal, I follow the law. But all things are not always equal and bad laws are there for the breaking. The correct outcome here is that the law is tested and amended. That is the way to end the perverse situation of the precise example you raise, where anybody with technical skills can fake a document and then win in court.
    - digitaltrees 4mo ago
      I never said that the act of making a digital doc look like it was scanned is fraud. I said that process would be used in other fraudulent acts.
      - bluebarbet 4mo ago
        >I never said that the act of making a digital doc look like it was scanned is fraud. Yes you did. Verbatim.
        digitaltrees 4mo ago
        You’re dropping the important clause: to pass a document off as being of a different origin and nature specifically to make have a desired legal effect. I think a library like this could be used for art or literature. For example, to make a document look like an old artifact in lord of the rings or a Sherlock Holmes mystery. The fraud isn’t in the conversion or appearance. It’s in the intent behind it and how it’s used.
    - digitaltrees 4mo ago
      Hard disagree. Just because you don’t understand the rationale of a law doesn’t mean it is arbitrary and disconnected from your safety or best interest. I’ll give a concrete example. In law school I was hired to write a memo on a traffic circle. There was a very deliberate and effective approach to identifying where pedestrian crossings were the safest. And the cross walk itself is an attempt to encourage people to go to the safe areas for crossing. Cross walks also create a clear zone of liability. If a driver hits a pedestrian in a crosswalk they are deemed at fault. Outside the crosswalk the pedestrian is deemed to have contributed. So the law incentivizes both driver and pedestrian behavior to converge on a known safety pattern in the safer section of the road. So you can jaywalk based on your analysis that it isn’t really that big of a deal or necessary for your safety but at the scale of society the law encourages the safest behavior. As far as signatures. I would agree there are better systems. But they still serve a valid function. I had ATT forge mysignature on a contract to try to get me to have to pay an early termination fee. But because I had other documents with my signature I was able to demonstrate that the forgery wasn’t even close to mine. I would honestly rather have that rather than a digital stamp or Docusign.
  - hananova 4mo ago
    [flagged]
BenjiWiebe 4mo ago
Print - sign - scan. I've never been told to keep the physical print out. I've also never had someone refuse my too-perfect digitally inserted signature, but I could totally see it happening. Oh and I don't like signing stuff anywhere, so I also used my scanned signature and got a custom stamp made. :)

bluebarbet 4mo ago

It's not that you're wrong, but the fact that it would be fraud is farcical and needs to be challenged. My bank demands that I perform this ridiculous hoop-jumping. Like others here, I use ImageMagick hocus pocus to defeat them with trivial ease (a couple of times they complained so I tweaked the algo a bit and they were happy). The whole situation is beyond absurd. It's security theater in place of security.

digitaltrees 4mo ago
This is fraud. Your are passing off a document as authentic by misleading use of visual artifacts to make the origin of the document appear different than reality. Just because you don’t like the security theatre does make it acceptable to misrepresent the origin of a document to satisfy the security requirements. And I gave a specific example, slipping a page into a document that wasn’t in the original and making it look like it belongs by making it look scanned. Imagine I changed the purchase price on your home to 10% of its value rather than the original agreed price and took it to court to enforce the purchase. This tech would make that appear more credible.
- falsemyrmidon 4mo ago
  You could just as easily edit it, print it, then scan it again. This tech doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't already do. The real problem is that written signatures are a poor form of authentication.
  - digitaltrees 4mo ago
    Just because there is an alternative path doesn’t mean this path won’t equally facilitate fraudulent acts. That is an example of a flawed argument named false equivalence. And it ignores that the this library eliminates the friction of printing, and enables the ability to scale the process.
  - SoftTalker 4mo ago
    Everyone is overlooking the reality that multiple parties have a copy of the documents, and a judge is not going to believe that the seller agreed to 10% of market value when they claim otherwise and they have a document backing it up and so does their lawyer and so does their real estate agent. And you are going to be charged with a crime if you attempt something like this.
    - digitaltrees 4mo ago
      There are plenty of examples of a single set of documents with no corroborating documents. In fact, when I was a lawyer for Lehman in 2008 most mortgage transfers were a line in a spreadsheet not a legal document. Many wills have only a single copy that was kept in a safe deposit box. I could go on and on.
      - SoftTalker 4mo ago
        The fact remains that altering a photocopied or faxed copy of a document has been trivially easy for decades and yet it's not really a problem in real life, because it's a criminal act to do so and present it as authentic.
        digitaltrees 4mo ago
        Which is easier to do this 10,000 times a print and scan work flow or a python script that calls this library :). I own home care agencies in 13 states and in the early years had to collect timesheets with physical signatures for medical billing. I know the work involved in printing, collecting, scanning, organizing and retaining/archiving physical signatures at scale. We lost real money when signatures weren’t collected or were lost because there were times we couldn’t collect a replacement for various reasons. I then built the digital system to collect signatures and had to get legislation passed to make them legally valid. We were literally blocked for several years because digital signatures were not permitted. So this isn’t a hypothetical I am throwing out just to make an argument and be annoying.
- bluebarbet 4mo ago
  An interesting take that reveals differing moral bases. As a preamble, I have zero moral qualms about technically committing fraud in order to access my own money (almost nobody would). More important, I choose not to respect a law that upholds an insecure and broken system. A parallel with traffic regulations come to mind: as a cyclist I regularly break rules when I consider that they do not best serve my safety. All things being equal, I follow the law. But all things are not always equal and bad laws are there for the breaking. The correct outcome here is that the law is tested and amended. That is the way to end the perverse situation of the precise example you raise, where anybody with technical skills can fake a document and then win in court.
  - digitaltrees 4mo ago
    I never said that the act of making a digital doc look like it was scanned is fraud. I said that process would be used in other fraudulent acts.
    - bluebarbet 4mo ago
      >I never said that the act of making a digital doc look like it was scanned is fraud. Yes you did. Verbatim.
      - digitaltrees 4mo ago
        You’re dropping the important clause: to pass a document off as being of a different origin and nature specifically to make have a desired legal effect. I think a library like this could be used for art or literature. For example, to make a document look like an old artifact in lord of the rings or a Sherlock Holmes mystery. The fraud isn’t in the conversion or appearance. It’s in the intent behind it and how it’s used.
  - digitaltrees 4mo ago
    Hard disagree. Just because you don’t understand the rationale of a law doesn’t mean it is arbitrary and disconnected from your safety or best interest. I’ll give a concrete example. In law school I was hired to write a memo on a traffic circle. There was a very deliberate and effective approach to identifying where pedestrian crossings were the safest. And the cross walk itself is an attempt to encourage people to go to the safe areas for crossing. Cross walks also create a clear zone of liability. If a driver hits a pedestrian in a crosswalk they are deemed at fault. Outside the crosswalk the pedestrian is deemed to have contributed. So the law incentivizes both driver and pedestrian behavior to converge on a known safety pattern in the safer section of the road. So you can jaywalk based on your analysis that it isn’t really that big of a deal or necessary for your safety but at the scale of society the law encourages the safest behavior. As far as signatures. I would agree there are better systems. But they still serve a valid function. I had ATT forge mysignature on a contract to try to get me to have to pay an early termination fee. But because I had other documents with my signature I was able to demonstrate that the forgery wasn’t even close to mine. I would honestly rather have that rather than a digital stamp or Docusign.
- hananova 4mo ago
  [flagged]

BenjiWiebe 4mo ago

Print - sign - scan. I've never been told to keep the physical print out. I've also never had someone refuse my too-perfect digitally inserted signature, but I could totally see it happening. Oh and I don't like signing stuff anywhere, so I also used my scanned signature and got a custom stamp made. :)