RE: Notary services requirements -- directions?

["Santosh Chokhani" <chokhani@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I vote for Larry's proposal for the scope of Electronic Notary services.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf-ltans@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-ietf-ltans@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Larry Masinter
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2004 8:42 PM
To: 'Richard Hansberger'; ietf-ltans@xxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Notary services requirements -- directions?



> In answer to your first question, we've always understood the
> term "Notary Service" to be a technology that Notaries could use, not a 
> technology that others can use in lieu of notarization. If that
> means the name of the  service needs to change, I'll leave that
> decision in more capable hands.

While "Notary Service" might be ambiguous, I don't think
this means we have to rename it. After all, the ways in which one noun can
modify another is ambiguous:  steak knife, steel knife, boy-scout knife use
different kinds of modification. (From the Addams Family movie, about Girl
Scout cookies:  "Are they made from real Girl Scouts?")

In the context of LTANS, "notary service" seems to have been intended as
something much more narrow than what a Notary does.

  http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/ltans-charter.html

focuses on a fairly narrow set of workflows:

  In many scenarios, users need to be able to ensure and prove the
  existence and validity of data, especially digitally signed data, in a
  common and reproducible way over a long and possibly undetermined period
  of time.

  ... 

  Long-term non-repudiation of digitally signed data is an important
  aspect of PKI-related standards. Standard mechanisms are needed to
  handle routine events, such as expiry of signer's public key certificate
  and expiry of trusted time stamp authority certificate. 

I think we should stick to a narrow definition for notary service
requirements, and focus on those services that can reasonably be
accomplished without manual (human) intervention;the use of 'notary' in the
title is evocative (notary-like services; just like a 'stone lion' is a
lion-like stone).

I see, from http://www.nationalnotary.org/enjoa/index.cfm?text=enjoaHome
and related web pages, that there is an industry focused on tools that
Notaries can use, including for support of notarization in electronic
workflows.

I suggest we do not include these in the notary service requirements.

Larry
-- 
http://larry.masinter.net