[nunobrito]

If that is case, then it would have been wrong from the beginning for any government to keep hold of the private keys for the signature on my citizen card.

Because in that case they can sign documents on my behalf without my permission. In a court case, it would be near impossible for me to prove that the government gave my private key to someone else and that it wasn't me signing an incriminating document.

[ptx]

I apparently didn't phrase that very well. If what is the case? I was trying to ask which case was the case, not trying to claim that something specific was the case.

I'm familiar with electronic signatures, and I know what documents are, but I have never heard the phrase "electronic signing documents" and don't know what that is supposed to mean. What kind of documents? Documents about signing, documents that were signed, documents in the sense that files containing keys could be considered documents, or what?

[nunobrito]

In Portugal we were early adopters for digital signatures on citizen cards.

You use the card reader, insert your gov-issued identification and can sign PDF papers which have legal validity since the private key from the citizen card was used.

Now imagine someone signing random legal documents with your ID for things like debts, opening companies or subscritions to whatever.

[pastage]

Signed documents can be as simple as an ID of the transaction, a statement in text, PII data that identify what you sign, or a store of larger PDF files for download and verification. We do not know. I base this on how signing works technically in Sweden.

CGI is not the only supplier of these services.

[whizzter]

We might've lucked out here, there is some signature data on ID cards today and official _plans_ to make a government backed signing service, but practically _nobody_ uses them in practice to just revoking all those keys will be a minor issue.

Currently most Swede's use a private bank consortisum controlled ID solution for most logins and signatures.