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You are correct on the technical aspects- it's certainly trivial to take the digital signature and apply it to something the signer didn't actually see. But we'

by delinka 13y ago

You are correct on the technical aspects- it's certainly trivial to take the digital signature and apply it to something the signer didn't actually see. But we're all already signing on the POS pin pad with a pen on a touchscreen. It's going to take someone actually transporting a signature to another document and a resulting lawsuit to see the practical impact of accepting physical signatures with a digital medium.

lisper 13y ago
> we're all already signing on the POS pin pad with a pen on a touchscreen That's a little different because the pin pad might have an audit trail built in to it that would allow the merchant to prove (or at least provide evidence for) the provenance of the signature. I don't know if pin pads actually do this, but it's possible. With a signature that comes in as a stream of bits over the internet from some unknown source this is not possible even in principle. And that is exactly the problem. People think it's the signature that matters because that is what they see. It isn't. What matters is that the signature provides some evidence about the intent of a particular person at a particular time. A physical signature on a physical document provides such evidence. An electronic signature does not and cannot. BTW, even physical signatures have pitfalls. They bind only to the single sheet of paper they are actually on. This is the reason that on documents that actually matter they make you initial every page. Because without those initials it's trivial to swap one page of the document for another and it is impossible to tell which version you actually signed.
- pinwale 13y ago
  While your points are valid, they are not relevant in a legal sense (at least in the United States). An electronic signature is as good as a paper signature under the ESign Act of 2000 if they follow this definition: `electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.` Hell, even sending the words "I accept" via Morse code over telegraph was considered a legal signature in the 19th century. However, if there a dispute over the authenticity of the signature and found to be fraudulant, the courts have ruled that it's not a signature then.
  - lisper 13y ago
    The problem is not disputes over the authenticity of the signature. The problem is disputes over what that signature is connected to, i.e. disputes of the form: "Yes, that is my signature, but that is not the document I signed, this over here is the document that I signed." That is the reason that when you sign a physical document you sign the actual document, and not a blank piece of paper that you then attach to the document with a paper clip.
    - kylebrown 13y ago
      That's what cryptographic signatures are for ("digital signature" vs "electronic signature"). Hash the document and then sign the hash, to establish probabilistic certainty as to exactly what they signed.
eitally 13y ago
I know so many people who already keep an image or PDF version of their digitized signature just to avoid the print+sign+scan hassle by pasting it into new docs.

by delinka 13y ago

lisper 13y ago

> we're all already signing on the POS pin pad with a pen on a touchscreen That's a little different because the pin pad might have an audit trail built in to it that would allow the merchant to prove (or at least provide evidence for) the provenance of the signature. I don't know if pin pads actually do this, but it's possible. With a signature that comes in as a stream of bits over the internet from some unknown source this is not possible even in principle. And that is exactly the problem. People think it's the signature that matters because that is what they see. It isn't. What matters is that the signature provides some evidence about the intent of a particular person at a particular time. A physical signature on a physical document provides such evidence. An electronic signature does not and cannot. BTW, even physical signatures have pitfalls. They bind only to the single sheet of paper they are actually on. This is the reason that on documents that actually matter they make you initial every page. Because without those initials it's trivial to swap one page of the document for another and it is impossible to tell which version you actually signed.

pinwale 13y ago
While your points are valid, they are not relevant in a legal sense (at least in the United States). An electronic signature is as good as a paper signature under the ESign Act of 2000 if they follow this definition: `electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.` Hell, even sending the words "I accept" via Morse code over telegraph was considered a legal signature in the 19th century. However, if there a dispute over the authenticity of the signature and found to be fraudulant, the courts have ruled that it's not a signature then.
- lisper 13y ago
  The problem is not disputes over the authenticity of the signature. The problem is disputes over what that signature is connected to, i.e. disputes of the form: "Yes, that is my signature, but that is not the document I signed, this over here is the document that I signed." That is the reason that when you sign a physical document you sign the actual document, and not a blank piece of paper that you then attach to the document with a paper clip.
  - kylebrown 13y ago
    That's what cryptographic signatures are for ("digital signature" vs "electronic signature"). Hash the document and then sign the hash, to establish probabilistic certainty as to exactly what they signed.

eitally 13y ago

I know so many people who already keep an image or PDF version of their digitized signature just to avoid the print+sign+scan hassle by pasting it into new docs.