Re: tlug: Office suite for use under Linux

[Frank Bennett <bennett@example.com>]

Karl-Max Wagner <karlmax@example.com> writes:

> >     ... seal ...

> I LOVE that seal nonsense: those things are a lot easier to copy
> than a signature. Every idiot with a scanner can get an
> electronic version of it, have a stamp maker make as many as he
> wants and cause trouble. Opens huge opportunities for the
> criminally inclined.....

I'm sorry, but if it were that simple, we'd be using signatures
over here tomorrow.

There are indeed problems with the use of seals to prove
identity, but (to coin a phrase) security is never perfect.  The
_physical_ security of a seal may be pretty flakey, but just as
with signatures, it's backed up by other measures that help to
stabilize things enough for transactions to work.  On the legal
side, there are criminal sanctions for fraud.  On the practical
side, guarantors are frequently required in even fairly minor
transactions -- normally a role filled by a known member of the
community or a professional guarantor in a position to, um, exert
influence over his principal.

Remember that in transactions in which significant amounts of
money change hands between strangers (like taking money out of
your bank account on the basis of a seal...) the seal alone isn't
going to get you anywhere.  For a bank account, you'll need the
bank book itself.  For a property transaction, you'll need the
deeds, and an impression of the seal from the registry office,
against which your seal will be compared.  In an age of digital
technology, this by itself doesn't add much security, but to get
the copy of the seal image itself, you'll be expected to present
some form of personal identification.  This requirement of
supporting documents is accompanied (unsurprisingly) by a common
sense principle embedded in people's behavior: you don't keep the
seal and the document or documents to which it applies in the
same place, and you guard the document every bit as carefully as
you guard the seal.

Interestingly, this system of third-party registration of the
seal image is quite similar in its mechanics to verification of
authorship using public key encryption technology -- which means
that the Japanese legal system already has a jump-start in
adapting to electronic transactions and the instances of fraud
that will inevitably follow their popularization.

Like any system of security, seals depend on layers of
obstruction, each of which makes it a little more difficult for a
fraudulent party to slip through.  It isn't perfect, but it's not
something that anybody and his dog can walk through anytime they
feel like it, either.

Cheers,
-- 
Frank G Bennett, Jr         @@
Faculty of Law, Nagoya Univ () email: bennett@example.com
Tel: +81[(0)52]789-2239     () WWW:   http://rumple.soas.ac.uk/~bennett/
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