Maybe @Photomancer can explain e-signatures to everyone, because it would appear that he is now the third candidate in the history of the Space to have filed his Statement of Intent correctly by having it legally signed.
Bylaws Section 4.6.1.5. Each candidate must provide a signed letter of intent prior to election.
Given the ongoing contentions over the last year, I’d recommend each candidate follow David’s example and sign your Statement of Intent to make it legit.
There are signed letters of intent for at least the last 2 years of candidates. On printed paper, with ink signatures.
I had no idea. Thank you for letting everyone know.
that is SOOOO 1990’s. 
Sometimes oldschool is the easier way 
I have a signed original if anyone wants to see it, the by-laws do not say where they have to be delivered.
I assume, that anyone that posts the Letter of Intent online has met the intent and complied since posting creates an “e-signature” (since the name listed is tied to your user account) in the wiki page and is delivered to the entire membership. Anyone not having “/s/” this on their LOI I would not remotely consider not signed or not delivered - because there is electronic traceability and there is no stated place of delivery.
I don’t consider it big deal, just habit of doing documents this way.
Example of how this is acceptable by a Federal Court.
I’d reason that the chain of custody on proving user authentication as a signature would be tedious and require multiple witnesses, whereby a s-signature would be straightforward and require no witness.
Only if they also have to fax it in.
It’s pretty lax, by my reading.
The U.S. Code defines an electronic signature for the purpose of US law as “an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.”[22] It may be an electronic transmission of the document which contains the signature, as in the case of facsimile transmissions, or it may be encoded message, such as telegraphy using Morse code.
In the United States, the definition of what qualifies as an electronic signature is wide and is set out in the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (“UETA”) released by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) in 1999.[23] It was influenced by ABA committee white papers and the uniform law promulgated by NCCUSL. Under UETA, the term means “an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.” This definition and many other core concepts of UETA are echoed in the U.S. ESign Act of 2000.[22] 47 US states, the District of Columbia, and the US Virgin Islands have enacted UETA.[24] Only New York, Washington State, and Illinois have not enacted UETA,[24] but each of those states has adopted its own electronic signatures statute.[25][26][27]
Officially signed,
I think S-signatures were meant to be a legal concept to make “electronically signed” documents by some other means, much less contestable in court. It’s not that “/s/ John Doe” is more secure. It’s that there’s statutes and precedents behind its practice that a court would accept and lawyers are less likely to challenge.
Having a signed document, with an ink signature, can still be challenged in court, for example, but would require something like an expert witness to show that it’s fake. Whereby, the automatic assumption of the court is that an ink signature is valid. The same would be true of a S-signature, as everyone has been electronically submitting court documents in this way for years (not just federal Courts, but Texas Courts).
The wiki’s authentication system on the other hand (managed by volunteers, which may or may not be reliably audited, and who might have a conflict of interest) would be a soft spot for an attorney to focus their attack.
An attorney who focuses an attack on a S-signature, on the other hand, would likely bring on the wrath of the Court.
You have to ask yourself “why” that would happen though. Like to what end?
The only scenario I can think of is a disgruntled member who just wants to burn up time and money in court – the purpose of the signed statement of intent (to my reading) is notification to the membership that an individual is running in the election.
Say someone posts a forged letter of intent, the member is complicit in running and gets elected. Are they now an invalid board member? The letter of intent still served its purpose – to notify the membership of the intention to run. The signature in this case serves no security purpose.
Yes that is exactly what happens!
This is partly my thinking also, except it wouldn’t simply be an issue of whether the member is complicit in running, but whether they have complied with the requirements.
Any authentication system, especially one like ours, can easily be the target of an attack to be determined “not a signature” by a court.
The same can be said of actual, pen-and-ink signatures.
Forgery is trivially easy – signatures are not a security function!
It’s a statement of “I back this document in a way that is legally binding”. That’s it!
Having said that, I do appreciate the fact that someone keeps a paper copy on file somewhere. But hand-wringing over e-signatures seems excessive when I can now sign my IRS forms with last-year’s taxable income figure.
The point of the attack wouldn’t be to show that the person created or didn’t create the “signature”.
The point of the attack would be to show that the “signature” was not an actual signature according to the letter of the law.
Ink signatures are the oldest established signatures.
S-Signatures are pretty new, but well established.
E-Signatures such as an electronic version of an Ink signature, are well established.
Everything else, such as an authentication system, can be much more easily attacked.
I think this is starting to head towards concern trolling at this point.
I think there may be a conflated rationalization for wanting an end to the discussion at this point.
I have been finding this conversation interesting and informative. It seems mostly just an examination and discussion of modern day signature and verification pros and cons, not an attack on DMS policies and procedures, per se.
Everyone, please carry on.
