e-signatures

One of my long held concerns about digital security is e-signatures – e.g., here, and also mentioned here.

My first concern is that use of e-signatures without permission of the person concerned is basically fraud and/or identity theft (or perhaps impersonation?).

This can have major consequences. 

There was, in fact, a case where the death of a patient in a hospital was found to be due to a staff member using a digital signature without permission, and thus causing the patient to undergo a procedure that killed them. (I'll see if I can find a link to that media report.)

In other situations, problems can arise because admin staff think a matter is simple and straightforward, when it is not - and I’ve encountered such situations where support staff thought a signature for a tender was OK, not realising that there were subtle and very problematic professional problems. 

No-one should ever use a digital signature without the permission of that person - and, in fact, systems should bypass the potential human failings of trust by making that impossible. As an example, one US-based abattoir company has password protection on all copies of digital signatures so no-one by the person concerned can access and use them (which carries through to the relevant cell of forms – so no-one can access the signature through the form either). 

The other area where this is a problem - and I am thinking of the so many cyber hacks we are experiencing now, in particular - is third parties requiring staff to use a digital signature - e.g., clients insisting of staff providing digital signatures, companies doing the same to their subbies, and so on. 

The same realisation of responsibility (duty of care) and implementation of precautions applies to those situations as well.

This is too important an issue to be allowed to be buried. 

 

A small related note: after six decades of handwriting with pen/pencil and paper and typing, I am not going to waste hours of my life and cause completely unnecessary stress and distress by trying to develop the DIFFERENT muscle coordination required to be able to use a mouse to do digital signatures. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that expecting people do that is tantamount to ageist and physical disability discrimination.

 

Assumptions / basis 

In writing this, I have assumed / started from the following: 

• this blog states quite clearly that it is about political and human rights matters, including lived experience of problems, and thus I will assume readers are reasonable people who have noted the content warning in the post header;

Possible flaws 

Where I can, I will try to highlight possible flaws / issues you should consider:

• there may be flawed logical arguments in the above: to find out more about such flaws and thinking generally, I recommend Brendan  Myers’ free online course “Clear and Present Thinking”; 
  
• I could be wrong - so keep your thinking caps on, and make up your own minds for yourself.
  

 

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Finally, remember: we need to be more human being rather than human doing.