Each country across the world has their own version of Digital or Electronic Communication and transactions acts, which effects the legality of Digital or Electronic Signatures. In South Africa, this act is Act 25 of 2002 (ECT Act) South Africa
Here in SA, as it is in most other countries around the world, when you put pen to paper, a signature is nothing else as a mechanism to authenticate oneself.
This ECT Act allows us to ensure that the digital version of our signature is equivalent to the signature when we put pen to paper. The tragedy however is the multiple steps of authentication one needs to go through in order to adhere to this act. When you through the cost for certification into the mix, you have a real headache on the way, which will last for many months, as you now need to go through the process with a corrupt government, which always wants a brown paper bag exercise, in order for you to get certified, even though you adhere to the actual process and everything needed to be certified without a brown paper bag. It literally costs millions of Rands to be certified by all the appropriate bodies. To put this in perspective, a few million Rands is a few hundred thousand US dollars.
Various types of Digital signatures
Biometric Signatures - Handwritten
So this is basically exactly what it the name states. This process is just a digital version of singing a piece of paper. This is done using a digital pen, or a touch and pressure sensitive tablet or pad. One of those devices, which you sign on when you receive a delivery. After you sign, the device, attach your signature to the document and it is legally binding. Sounds simple, doesn't it?
So how does Biometric Signature Recognition work?
Handwritten biometrics can be split into two main categories:
Static: In this mode, users writes on paper, digitize it through an optical scanner or a camera, and the biometric system recognizes the text analyzing its shape. This group is also known as "off-line".
Dynamic: In this mode, users writes in a digitizing tablet, which acquires the text in real time. Another possibility is the acquisition by means of stylus-operated PDAs. Dynamic recognition is also known as "on-line".Dynamic information usually consists of the following information:
spatial coordinate x(t)
spatial coordinate y(t)
pressure p(t)
azimuth az(t)
inclination in(t)
Better accuracies are achieved by means of dynamic systems
Digital Signatures
Digital signatures consist of asymmetric encryption keys that are issued by a Certificate Authority (CA) and used to encrypt non-biometric "digital signatures" to electronic documents. Essentially, digital signatures use an encryption key to bind a "signer's" identity to an electronic document in place of a unique handwritten signature. Think of it as an encrypted "rubber stamp" to signify approval of an electronic document. This private key is associated with a particular person's computer and can usually be accessed by entering some form of identification, wither a password, PIN, or biometric input such as a fingerprint or handwritten electronic signature capture pad. This system requires that the recipient of a digitally signed document possess a means to de-crypt the message (A public key, disseminated by the owner of a given private key to persons he trusts to view and validate his or her signed electronic documents). A CA serves as a regulatory authority that verifies that a particular encryption key has been issued to the person claiming to transmit a given digitally signed document. It is the private key signature in conjunction with the claimed identity of the signer and certificate authority that serve to validate and authenticate a document.
Source Credit - Signatura
Digital Signature on the blockchain
Another massive problem can yet again be solved by the Blockchain technology. We have a private and public key, in a trustless environment. We can sign a document digitally, encrypted via our private key. This encrypted information can then be sent over the internet and can be validated by our public key on the other side, in other words by the recipient as our Private and Public keys are linked.
If we use the blockchain technology as the backbone for a Global Digital Signature platform, we do not jump though all the legal hoops required to adhere to the standard imposed by the various government legislative processes. Why? Because the blockchain is trustless and therefor can be 100% trusted in it's purest form. There are already companies which has built solutions for this on the Blockchain.
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