And the people that are going to check for a digital signature in the first place, THEN check that the signature emanates from a trusted key, then, eventually, check who’s deciding the list of trusted keys… those people, where are they?
Because the lack of trust, validation, verification, and more generally the lack of any credibility hasn’t stopped anything from spreading like a dumpster fire in a field full of dumpsters doused in gasoline. Part of my job is providing digital signature tools and creating “trusted” data (I’m not in sales, obviously), and the main issue is that nobody checks anything, even when faced with liability, even when they actually pay for an off the shelve solution to do so. And I’m talking about people that should care, not even the general public.
There are a lot of steps before “digitally signing everything” even get on people’s radar. For now, a green checkmark anywhere is enough to convince anyone, sadly.
An individual wouldn’t verify this but enough independent agencies or news orgs would probably care enough to verify a photo. For the vast majority we’re already too far gone to properly separate fiction an reality. If we can’t get into a courtroom and prove that a picture or video is fact or fiction then we’re REALLY fucked.
It could be a feature of web browsers. Images would get some icon indicating the valid signature, just like browsers already show the padlock icon indicating a valid certificate. So everybody would be seeing the verification.
But I don’t think it’s a good idea, for other reasons.
And the people that are going to check for a digital signature in the first place, THEN check that the signature emanates from a trusted key, then, eventually, check who’s deciding the list of trusted keys… those people, where are they?
Because the lack of trust, validation, verification, and more generally the lack of any credibility hasn’t stopped anything from spreading like a dumpster fire in a field full of dumpsters doused in gasoline. Part of my job is providing digital signature tools and creating “trusted” data (I’m not in sales, obviously), and the main issue is that nobody checks anything, even when faced with liability, even when they actually pay for an off the shelve solution to do so. And I’m talking about people that should care, not even the general public.
There are a lot of steps before “digitally signing everything” even get on people’s radar. For now, a green checkmark anywhere is enough to convince anyone, sadly.
An individual wouldn’t verify this but enough independent agencies or news orgs would probably care enough to verify a photo. For the vast majority we’re already too far gone to properly separate fiction an reality. If we can’t get into a courtroom and prove that a picture or video is fact or fiction then we’re REALLY fucked.
It could be a feature of web browsers. Images would get some icon indicating the valid signature, just like browsers already show the padlock icon indicating a valid certificate. So everybody would be seeing the verification.
But I don’t think it’s a good idea, for other reasons.
I think there’s enough people who care about this that you can just provide the data and wait for someone to do the rest.
I’d like to think like that too, but it’s actually experience with large business users that led me to say otherwise.