digitally signing stuff

Alexander Schmehl blogged about how digital signatures aren't really well-organized currently; the PGP trust model is hard for a government to legally enforce, whereas the X.509 trust model isn't nice to a user (expensive, windows-only solution, or whatnot).

I agree. And for that reason, I'm very happy with the fact that the Belgian Government, trough a company called Zetes, developed a digital ID card...

...fully based on open standards, such as X.509, PKCS#15 (a standard to communicate with smart cards), and others. The ID card will optionally contain a signing key apart from the digitalized identity information, which will be signed by a CA which is to be instituted by the Government. You'll be able to read the card using standard SmartCard-reading hardware.

When people with clue design something, it's always great. This is far better than the Certipost fiasco, which is a somewhat-X.509 system that doesn't work under real browsers. One minor detail; currently Zetes is in breach of the OpenSC license by not providing source to modified LGPL binaries—but they told me they always planned to release their source, and that it will happen in the next few days. Let's see if they keep that promise.

I'd want a smart card reader for christmas.