Cryptography and PKI makes it pretty feasible to authenticate digital documents.
When used completely and properly. Which rarely, if ever, happens because it requires end-users to know how to use keys and keep them offline somehow.
This system hasn’t lasted ~90 years because they just throw someone in a chair and let them figure it out on the job.
Any reliable system, electro-mechanical or digital, needs thorough user training and checks.
The worry with this one is it’s a single authoritative record with no easy way to backup or replicate it. They say there are non-authoritative (at least legally) digital versions of most(?) of the records. I hope/assume they’re actually more consistent with that than the video makes it seem because those are the only feasible off-site backups they really have. If not one fire is all it would take to wipe out an entire countries SSA program.
This is a government office. A government should be able to build the technical knowledge required to keep a private signing key secure.
I do agree that individual-to-individual cryptography is more difficult, but how often do you need to check the authenticity of a document from a friend or acquaintance, digital or otherwise?
Well, a bank. A financial transaction. Health records. Not just email to your friends.
Government has the technical knowledge - heck many people here have that - but implementing a standard is a different problem, it’s a political problem. A pit full of vipers, in a sense. We’re unlikely to see standardized crypto signing anytime soon. At least IMO.
So do authorized notaries and paper trails for physical documents. Everyone who had a wallet hacked that lost NFTs or currencies can tell you that crypto cant protect your assets.
Cryptocurrencies have absolutely nothing to do with cryptography, they just appropriated the name.
Uhm Actually 🤓 crypto is called crypto, because it is based on cryptograhy
Nonsense argument. It is much easier to forge or steal a paper copy of a document that it is to do so with an equally well protected digital copy.
Vast majority of digital theft is done via social engineering and not through some exploit in the underlying technology.
If the local county records get broken into and every property deed gets stolen, the theif doesn’t have ownership of every property in the county. Anything that represents physical ownership of an item is way more secure with a physical paper trial than a digital one. I understand that cryptocurrencies are different than cryptography, but a physical copy of a record i own and an official copy that a relevant party owns, such as a local government, hospital, or bank will always be more secure than digital tokens of ownership.
Yeah, obviously it’s the user’s fault for not holding crypto correctly. This is why my crypto is stored on a floppy disk that can only be read by my 8086 computer with no Internet connectivity. If you loose money it’s always your fault for not being prepared.
