• Optional@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Amazing. They say the records are digitized but they still use the paper version as the authority for court cases and things like that. That’s amazing because the rest of the world is rushing to jettison the idea of paper as authority and everyone accepts easily faked electronic documents.

      • cadekat
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        1 month ago

        Cryptography and PKI makes it pretty feasible to authenticate digital documents.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          When used completely and properly. Which rarely, if ever, happens because it requires end-users to know how to use keys and keep them offline somehow.

          • turmacar@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            This system hasn’t lasted ~90 years because they just throw someone in a chair and let them figure it out on the job.

            Any reliable system, electro-mechanical or digital, needs thorough user training and checks.

            The worry with this one is it’s a single authoritative record with no easy way to backup or replicate it. They say there are non-authoritative (at least legally) digital versions of most(?) of the records. I hope/assume they’re actually more consistent with that than the video makes it seem because those are the only feasible off-site backups they really have. If not one fire is all it would take to wipe out an entire countries SSA program.

          • cadekat
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            1 month ago

            This is a government office. A government should be able to build the technical knowledge required to keep a private signing key secure.

            I do agree that individual-to-individual cryptography is more difficult, but how often do you need to check the authenticity of a document from a friend or acquaintance, digital or otherwise?

            • Optional@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Well, a bank. A financial transaction. Health records. Not just email to your friends.

              Government has the technical knowledge - heck many people here have that - but implementing a standard is a different problem, it’s a political problem. A pit full of vipers, in a sense. We’re unlikely to see standardized crypto signing anytime soon. At least IMO.

        • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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          1 month ago

          So do authorized notaries and paper trails for physical documents. Everyone who had a wallet hacked that lost NFTs or currencies can tell you that crypto cant protect your assets.

          • ysjet@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            Cryptocurrencies have absolutely nothing to do with cryptography, they just appropriated the name.

            • Txmyx@feddit.org
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              1 month ago

              Uhm Actually 🤓 crypto is called crypto, because it is based on cryptograhy

              • ysjet@lemmy.world
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                1 month ago

                It’s called cryptocurrency because Bitcoin used sha256 as it’s proof of work algorithm for funsies, but has no actual tie to cryptography. Proof of work is not cryptography.

                • Txmyx@feddit.org
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                  1 month ago

                  Bitcoin (abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography Source

                  But you’re kinda right with the proof-of-work. But I would consider sha256 as cryptography

                  • ysjet@lemmy.world
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                    1 month ago

                    That’s like saying that you’re a English lord because you watched a TV show involving the middle ages one time. Just because a concept contains, as one option amongst many, a thing, doesn’t make that concept the thing.

                    The proof of work could be anything- sha256 was just something that happened to be picked. That doesn’t make it cryptography any more than you could call RCS cryptochat.

                • cadekat
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                  1 month ago

                  I hate to be that guy, but Bitcoin uses elliptic curve cryptography to sign transactions, and SHA256 is definitely in the field of cryptography. While cryptocurrency isn’t purely cryptography, it is cryptography plus economics. Borrowing the “crypto” prefix, at least in my opinion, is reasonable.

                  • ysjet@lemmy.world
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                    1 month ago

                    It’s not borrowing, it’s attempting to entirely hijack and replace the prefix. This is already causing a massive loss in trust of the entire field of cryptography.

                    As I said in another reply, just because it uses sha256 as it’s proof of work doesn’t make it crypto, as it was essentially picked out of a hat.

                    And for the signing of transactions, are we going to start calling bank checks crypto? RCS being renamed crypto? Just because something tangentially has some sort of cryptographic signature tied into it does not make that object cryptography or related to cryptography- it just means that it has a signature enveloping that object.

            • zbyte64@awful.systems
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              1 month ago

              Yeah, obviously it’s the user’s fault for not holding crypto correctly. This is why my crypto is stored on a floppy disk that can only be read by my 8086 computer with no Internet connectivity. If you loose money it’s always your fault for not being prepared.

          • daq@lemmy.sdf.org
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            1 month ago

            Nonsense argument. It is much easier to forge or steal a paper copy of a document that it is to do so with an equally well protected digital copy.

            Vast majority of digital theft is done via social engineering and not through some exploit in the underlying technology.

            • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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              1 month ago

              If the local county records get broken into and every property deed gets stolen, the theif doesn’t have ownership of every property in the county. Anything that represents physical ownership of an item is way more secure with a physical paper trial than a digital one. I understand that cryptocurrencies are different than cryptography, but a physical copy of a record i own and an official copy that a relevant party owns, such as a local government, hospital, or bank will always be more secure than digital tokens of ownership.

              • daq@lemmy.sdf.org
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                1 month ago

                That’s just demonstrably false. Lots of historical precedent for people losing property, access, etc due to lost or incorrectly filed documents, clerical errors, corruption and a billion other ways. None of this really affects digital assets.