The proposed digital signature standard: Implications for electronic commerce

Abstract

On August 30, 1991 following considerable speculation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released A Proposed Federal Information Processing Standard for Digital Signature Standard (DSS). A digital signature standard should significantly enhance the development of electronic data security techniques, increasing the acceptance of these techniques and of electronic data interchange (EDI) and electronic commerce. However, NIST's choice of a Digital Signature Standard is enmeshed in controversy, with issues ranging from national security to economics, to law and to technology. This article does not attempt to resolve these issues but instead provides a survey of the significant legal and business issues raised by the Digital Signature Standard within the context of EDI.