Trustworthy 100-Year Digital Objects

["Olga Francois" <ofrancois@xxxxxxxx>]

From: RIGHTS-L Digest
---------------------------
Date:    Mon, 3 Feb 2003 00:10:20 -0800
From:    "H.M. Gladney" <hgladney@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Trustworthy 100-Year Digital Objects: Evidence Even after Every
         Witness is Dead

A report with the above title is available upon application to
hgladney@xxxxxxxxxxx and will be delivered by e-mail.   Its abstract
follows below the horizontal line.

Warning: this long report (MS Word Format, 2.8 Mbytes, 40 pages, 10
figures) might overwhelm your e-mail server.  For anyone who so
requests, I will segment the file using the MS Word support for long
documents.  I'll do this only after receiving some number of requests so
that I can batch doing this. Please let me know if you want it in
chunks.  (BTW, let me forestall inquiries--conversion to PDF format
increases the file size by more than 250%.)

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Trustworthy 100-Year Digital Objects: Evidence Even after Every Witness
is Dead

How can a publisher store digital information so that any reader can
reliably test its authenticity and provenance, even years later when no
witness can vouch for its validity?  What is the simplest security
infrastructure that is needed to protect evidence for authenticity
testing?

In ancient times, wax seals impressed with signet rings were affixed to
documents as evidence of their authenticity.  A digital counterpart is a
message authentication code fixed firmly to each important document.  If
a digital object is sealed together with its own audit trail, each user
will be able examine this evidence to decide whether he will trust that
the content is authentic-no matter how distant this user is in time,
space, and social affiliation from the documents source. This is true
for any kind of document, independently of its purposes, and provides
each user with autonomy for most of what he does.  Producers can prepare
works for preservation without permission from or synchronization with
any authority or service agent.  Librarians can add metadata without
communicating with document originators or repository managers. 
Consumers can test authenticity without Internet delays, apart from
those for fetching cryptographic keys.

We suggest technical means for accomplishing this: encapsulation of the
document content with metadata describing its origins, cryptographic
sealing, webs of trust for public keys rooted in a forest of respected
institutions, and a certain way of managing document identifiers.  These
means will satisfy emerging needs in civilian and military record
management, including medical patient records, regulatory records for
aircraft and pharmaceuticals, business records for financial audit, and
scholarly works.  Our method accomplishes much of what is sought under
labels such as trusted digital repositories, and does so more flexibly
and economically than any method yet proposed.  It requires at most easy
extensions of available content management software, and is therefore
compatible with what most digital repositories have installed and are
using today.

Regards, Henry       HMG Consulting
H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.   (408)867-5454
http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/
20044 Glen Brae Drive, Saratoga, CA 95070-5062

Cheerio, Henry
H.M. Gladney, Ph.D.   (408)867-5454
http://home.pacbell.net/hgladney/
20044 Glen Brae Drive, Saratoga, CA 95070-5062