Ive asked around, concerning Rob Shirey's recent message relating to
the quality of NASA and USPS activities in open security services.
I can find zero evidence in either agency that there is any intent to
"certify" Internet commercial documents.
This is certainly not within the remit of NASA; and whilst the USPS is
offering a trusted third party commercial service for time and date
stamping of electronic messages, no kind of original-property
certification is being attested to other than data integrity. Obviously
there is the added-value statement that said integrity was established
at date/time -- which is a valuable service to many EDI user
companies. (The USPS may not even have been sent the originated
content whose message-digest/signature it time stamped.)
So Im not sure what Nick is alluding to. The tone of the message
suggests he was just having a bad day.
Perhaps senior members of this list can enlighten us more on the
technical questions he raises concerning document certification, since
BNR and TIS are now directly providing their expertise to the USPS on
these matters?