Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
computerized at some point of their life cycle, and the integration of com-
puting, imaging, and printing technologies makes it easier than ever to
scan, copy, alter, distribute, print, and store high-quality documents. If the
moral authority of paper records has correspondingly diminished, the
electronic documents replacing them appear to us even more malleable.
Although scholars have examined the shift from print to digital in the
context of photography, newspapers, scholarly communication, and tech-
nical design, the impact of digitization on the evidentiary characteristics
of documents and its consequences for the functioning of bureaucracy has
been largely confined to expert discussions in the fields of law, computer
science, archives, and records management.
2
Yet, paper records (and paper-
work) form the material foundation on which the legitimacy and the day-
to-day operation of the nation-state rests—from the constitution itself, to
birth certificates, voting ballots, judgments, real estate deeds, and so on.
As Bruno Latour has remarked, Western culture typically dismisses the
crucial role of these material artifacts: “Common sense ironically makes
fun of these 'gratte papiers' and 'paper shufflers,' and often wonders what
all this 'red tape' is for; but the same question should be asked of the rest
of science and technology. In our cultures 'paper shuffling' is the source
of an essential power, that constantly escapes attention since its materiality
is ignored.”
3
Thus, although artfully disguised as a technocratic debate over
banal bureaucratic instruments, the definition of a new evidentiary regime
for the digitally powered State has far-reaching implications, as the digitiza-
tion of these instruments inevitably entails the renegotiation of their
power to testify truthfully, to apportion liability, to enforce accountability,
to constitute memory.
This topic is about a proposed technical foundation for this new evi-
dentiary regime, digital signatures based on the mathematics of public-key
cryptography. Invented in 1976 by two Stanford computer scientists,
digital signatures offered a method to confirm the origin and the integrity
of an electronic document, a method backed by mathematical proof. The
concept took the business world by storm in the late 1990s, riding a world-
wide movement of evidence law reform that sought to update the often
centuries-old rules that govern the admissibility of written evidence in
court. Lawmakers, legal scholars, and businessmen unanimously sang the
praise of a technology that would provide the secure framework needed
for the Information Society to blossom—or so the argument went.
