RE: Notary services requirements -- directions?

[Richard Hansberger <rhansberger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I appreciate the feedback. I would suggest, however, that because the term
"Notary" is legally defined and most states actually have criminal penalties
for misappropriating the term or claiming to be a Notary when one is not,
the term is less flexible than you suggest. In fact, we are facing a serious
problem right now in the Western states over the issue of using the term
"Notario Publico" inappropriately. In Latin America, a Notario Publico is,
generally speaking, an attorney; in the US, a Notary Public is a ministerial
official of the court. Many citizens are being misled by scam artists
preying upon general confusion of the two terms.

We ran into this same problem when the US Federal "E-Sign" Act was passed in
2000. A number of vendors offered "Digital Notary Services" that represented
their services as replacements for human Notaries.

Obviously, as a professional association we have our biases, but the term
"Notary" is used by US states to refer to a human witness to a transaction
of legal or financial significance. Human Notaries exist in large part to
bear witness to a signer's intent/willingness/capacity in the event a court
or other state official (e.g., in a trial proceeding or similar venue) needs
that kind of confirmation.

Just further food for thought...I don't mean to derail any good work being
done.

Take care,

Richard J. Hansberger
Director of eNotarization
National Notary Association
818-739-4027

-----Original Message-----
From: Larry Masinter [mailto:LMM@xxxxxxx] 
Sent: Saturday, October 02, 2004 4:42 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

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