Problem with faked-system-time option

[Jerome Baum]

>> I can hash a document M before D and later prove in court that the
>> document existed before D.
>>
>> Proof:
>>
>> Publish C(M) in N(D)
>
> Your claim would be submitted to a jury for consideration, as it's a
> question of fact and not law.  The jury would look at your claim of
> mathematical strength, be confused, and proceed to move on to something
> else.  Nothing in law is proven until a jury has declared it to be so...
> and pretty much everyone in a courtroom hates math.

What jury?

> You can attempt to prove your timestamp is correct: but ultimately,
> that's *not within your control*.  It's entirely within the jury's
> purview, and if the jury says "we don't buy this," then you haven't
> proven a thing.

What jury?

> "Proof," in a mathematical sense, is irrelevant in a courtroom.  Proof
> is whatever you can sneak past the judge that will make the jury buy
> your claim -- nothing more.  You don't get to declare what proofs are
> valid or invalid: only the jury does, and the jury doesn't care what you
> think.

Repeating yourself does not make your argument more valid.

> Consider this: MD5 is still the standard hash algorithm used in digital
> forensics.  Makes all of us have the flaming heebie-jeebies, of course:
> it's crazy to use MD5 to authenticate digital data, given the collision
> attacks against it.
>
> But for the courts... what the courts think of as "proof" is not what we
> think of as "proof."  We think MD5's weakness has been proven: but so
> far, juries are still regularly accepting MD5 as a cryptographically
> secure hash algorithm, which means that in the eyes of the court *it is*.

What juries?

Look at my signature and pay close attention to the "+49".

-- 
Jerome Baum
tel +49-1578-8434336
email jerome at jeromebaum.com
web www.jeromebaum.com
--
PGP: A0E4 B2D4 94E6 20EE 85BA E45B 63E4 2BD8 C58C 753A
PGP: 2C23 EBFF DF1A 840D 2351 F5F5 F25B A03F 2152 36DA