Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
years of office technologies have been enrolled at some point or another
in the service of producing these documents: handwriting, typewriting,
word processing (both freestyle and on printed forms), microfilming,
digital scans of paper documents, transcriptions of paper documents into
database software, and—of course—photocopying. In part, this diversity
results from the complex rules governing the production of copies, as
codified in the
Instruction générale relative à l'état civil
(IGREC), a docu-
ment providing a unique window on the documentary practices of the
French state. The IGREC specifies copies must faithfully reproduce,
without adaptation, indications included in the original (e.g., geographic
names or calendar). However, they must not reproduce indications no
longer considered acceptable, including any that would reveal race, reli-
gion, foreign nationality, or cause of death. Such tasks are complicated
by poor condition of the originals, poor indexing, or altogether missing
records
—
only 60 percent of the civil status records created in Algeria
during colonial rule were microfilmed, for example
—
often requiring that
records be reconstituted from whatever information is available. Copies
then are often altogether new records, rather than mere mechanical
reproductions.
Regardless of the technologies that produced them, the documents
display their data points in a rich array of visual forms
—
seals, stamps,
signatures, marginal annotations, alternation of printed and handwritten
characters, uppercase and lowercase, printed frames, and so on. Each must
be decoded in the context of its individual semiotic logic, but also accord-
ing to the (implicit) rules governing their spatial relationships: for example,
signatures authenticate what is written
above
them, and the vertical order-
ing of annotations indicates chronology.
Beyond the obvious signatures and seals, the documents also exhibit a
great diversity of authentication technologies. More than outright fraud,
it is the noise of sign systems that constantly threatens the document's
integrity. A simple misspelling or the inversion of first name and surname
weakens or even nullifies the record's power to identify. Rules for manu-
facture of originals and copies thus rely extensively on simple techniques
to combat this noise, provoke the attention of the trusted witness,
enhance the visual legibility of documents, and prevent obvious forms of
fraud:
