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
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