Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
Throughout the year, the sub-committee debated the possible parame-
ters of the new contractual mise en scène
—
including the use of multiple
distributed notaries, procurations for transmission of a single party's
consent, and even the use of video technologies and high-bandwidth
electronic links. All proposals suffered from the same fundamental lack of
elegance, desperately clunky in comparison with the
ancient régime
ele-
gance of the traditional scenario, or with the modern design of disembod-
ied Alice and Bob happily contracting in cyberspace. Even as the Conseil
supérieur boasted it fully met the framework required by the March 13 law,
the expensive public-key infrastructure put in place by the profession
seemed to offer little in the way of a concrete model of electronic authen-
ticity. Yet, the President of the Conseil ensured, notaries had the techno-
logical upper hand in the Information Age:
[The evidence law reform] introduces in the virtual world comparable dispositions
to those which we have known for a long time in the traditional universe of contract
law. Moreover, the explicit reference to authentic acts, desired by a unanimous
parliament, strengthen the role of the notary, promoter of legal security, by widen-
ing this eminent mission to computerized transactions. One must see here a kind
of recognition of the efforts of the profession, notably through its REAL network,
to rapidly adapt to the information technology revolution. The door of the future
is open; let's begin walking on the new paths with confidence.25
25
The reality was somewhat murkier. Although the notarial profession had
acquired what was by all accounts a promising (and expensive) piece of
cyberspace real estate, it was entirely unclear what it could used for. What
would a rank-and-file notary gain by undergoing the laborious and costly
process of subscribing to the network, acquiring the signature card, and
installing all necessary hardware and software? The Conseil supérieur could
only offer vague promises: “Electronic messaging and related services will
give us .
. .
gains in productivity. These exchanges will be fully secure.”
26
Yet no market for electronic notarial authenticity seemed likely to emerge
in the immediate to near future. The network's main selling point lay in
the future provision of strong authentication for real-time access to sensi-
tive online information resources, such as the cadastral database of the
Fichiers des hypothèques.
As a sales pitch, however, access control lacked the
rhetorical appeal of digital signatures.
Additional uncertainties seemed to further undermine the applicability
of cryptographic signatures to civil law authenticity. As a member of the
