Burdens of Proof: Cryptographic Culture and Evidence Law in the Age of Electronic Documents (Hardcover)

The gradual disappearance of paper and its familiar evidential qualities affects almost every dimension of contemporary life. From health records to ballots, almost all documents are now digitized at some point of their life cycle, easily copied, altered, and distributed. In Burdens of Proof, Jean-François Blanchette examines the challenge of defining a new evidentiary framework for electronic documents, focusing on the design of a digital equivalent to handwritten signatures.

From the blackboards of mathematicians to the halls of legislative assemblies, Blanchette traces the path of such an equivalent: digital signatures based on the mathematics of public-key cryptography. In the mid-1990s, cryptographic signatures formed the centerpiece of a worldwide wave of legal reform and of an ambitious cryptographic research agenda that sought to build privacy, anonymity, and accountability into the very infrastructure of the Internet. Yet markets for cryptographic products collapsed in the aftermath of the dot-com boom and bust along with cryptography's social projects.

Blanchette describes the trials of French bureaucracies as they wrestled with the application of electronic signatures to real estate contracts, birth certificates, and land titles, and tracks the convoluted paths through which electronic documents acquire moral authority. These paths suggest that the material world need not merely succumb to the virtual but, rather, can usefully inspire it. Indeed, Blanchette argues, in renewing their engagement with the material world, cryptographers might also find the key to broader acceptance of their design goals.

紙張逐漸消失及其熟悉的證據特性影響了當代生活的幾乎每個方面。從健康記錄到選票，幾乎所有文件都在其生命週期的某個時刻被數字化，容易被複製、修改和分發。在《證明的負擔》中，讓-弗朗索瓦·布朗舍特（Jean-François Blanchette）探討了為電子文件定義新的證據框架的挑戰，重點是設計一個數字等效的手寫簽名。

從數學家的黑板到立法機構的大廳，布朗舍特追蹤了這樣一個等效物的發展軌跡：基於公鑰密碼學的數字簽名。在1990年代中期，密碼簽名成為全球法律改革和雄心勃勃的密碼學研究議程的核心，旨在將隱私、匿名和責任建立在互聯網的基礎設施中。然而，在互聯網泡沫破裂後，密碼學產品市場崩潰，以及密碼學的社會項目。

布朗舍特描述了法國官僚機構在將電子簽名應用於房地產合同、出生證明和土地所有權時所面臨的困難，並追蹤了電子文件獲得道德權威的曲折途徑。這些途徑表明，物質世界不僅僅是被虛擬所取代，而且可以有用地啟發它。事實上，布朗舍特主張，在重新與物質世界接觸的過程中，密碼學家也可能找到實現其設計目標的更廣泛接受的關鍵。