Our Paper-based World of Secrets
And, so, the media were red hot last week with the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s home:
While this opens up many political questions, my general worry is why in the 21st Century, we are still using paper-based documents. The one thing I know about paper is that it is very difficult to control access to it. And, one might say that those who are “non-technical”, still need paper. But, that argument has long since passed, as Apple iPad and PDFs make access to viewing documents just like reading from paper. In fact, personally, I print out very few research papers and have them all on my iPad.
What we need from a document is thus: Confidentiality (only to be read by those who are trusted) … Integrity (a check on whether something has been created by a trusted entity and that it has NOT been changed)… and Access Control (a way of restricting the physical access to the document). For this — and you must smile — our paper documents are marked with these restrictions, created with wet signatures, and held in trusted physical places (such as a presidential box). It is all rather silly in this modern age — that wet signatures are even considered to have any real level of trust.
