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digitaltreesyesterday at 11:26 PM3 repliesview on HN

This is fraud. Your are passing off a document as authentic by misleading use of visual artifacts to make the origin of the document appear different than reality.

Just because you don’t like the security theatre does make it acceptable to misrepresent the origin of a document to satisfy the security requirements.

And I gave a specific example, slipping a page into a document that wasn’t in the original and making it look like it belongs by making it look scanned.

Imagine I changed the purchase price on your home to 10% of its value rather than the original agreed price and took it to court to enforce the purchase. This tech would make that appear more credible.


Replies

bluebarbetyesterday at 11:55 PM

An interesting take that reveals differing moral bases.

As a preamble, I have zero moral qualms about technically committing fraud in order to access my own money (almost nobody would).

More important, I choose not to respect a law that upholds an insecure and broken system. A parallel with traffic regulations come to mind: as a cyclist I regularly break rules when I consider that they do not best serve my safety. All things being equal, I follow the law. But all things are not always equal and bad laws are there for the breaking.

The correct outcome here is that the law is tested and amended. That is the way to end the perverse situation of the precise example you raise, where anybody with technical skills can fake a document and then win in court.

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falsemyrmidonyesterday at 11:45 PM

You could just as easily edit it, print it, then scan it again. This tech doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't already do.

The real problem is that written signatures are a poor form of authentication.

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hananovatoday at 3:11 AM

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