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Republican leading inquiry into Biden’s autopen use has digitally signed letters
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2025
236 points (99.2% liked)
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The funny thing what The Guardian and others do not get is the crucial difference between a “signature machine” and a digital signature. They treat both equally fake, even though a digital signature is a cryptographic secure way to proof someone’s identity, where the signature machine just puts ink on a paper.
But that’s how laws work in a lot of countries. Ink on the paper is accepted, digital signatures not. Now have fun proving if a signature was drawn by hand or machine.
The whole purpose of a digital signature is to provide a legally verigiable signature. It's still being defined in some countries, but in US and Canada its very specifically defined. Autopen seems to available to rich people as needed, but if the wikipedia article is accurate, a form of autopen has been available to US presidents dating back to Thomas Jefferson. I'd be surprised if the legal minds haven't defined the legal use of autopen somewhere.
I don't think The Guardian is wrong here, see this passage from the article:
He did not use cryptographic signatures, but images of his written signature, which I think is pretty similar to using an autopen (albeit probably much easier to detect)