Re: rough sketch of a potential solution

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:02:55 -0500 Keith Moore <[email protected]> wrote:

> So if we want to support a  "witness" or "notary" function that 
> probably means an extension to S/MIME  and/or OpenPGP.  And probably 
> each of the original authors would have to sign the message, and then 
> the witness/notary would sign *that*.

I think that this is problem regardless of iaaa concerns and probably 
outside the scope for ii8n although there is some relation.   As long as 
you deal with the envelope properly in iaaa, then I don't think that this 
scenario should add any extra complexity.

Why do I think that ...

We actually provide this type of facility using nested S/MIME signature 
blocks and some multipart MIME, but it requires a special MUA function to 
process and present the user with the "cooked" representation with notary 
infomation.   So it is possible today, it's just that the generally 
deployed MUA's don't have processing rules for it.   It's sort of like 
processing appledouble.  I have been sitting on my hands in terms of 
getting a specification done for it. I had been remarkably unsuccessful in
terms of generating interest for notarization so presumed that its time 
had not yet come.

Cheers.
---
Steve Hole
Chief Technology Officer - Billing and Payment Systems
ACI Worldwide
<mailto:[email protected]>
Phone: 780-424-4922