In Burdens of Proof: Cryptographic Culture and Evidence Law in the Age of Electronic Documents, author Jean-François Blanchette observes that the move to a paperless society (a completely paperless society is unrealistic, as articulately detailed in The Myth of the Paperless Office) means that paper-based evidence needs to be recreated in the digital world.

The book details the many the challenges of defining a new evidentiary framework for electronic documents.

In the backdrop of the book, he also writes a fascinating narrative of the development of cryptography, with an emphasis in the years just before and long after Diffie–Hellman and RSA.

The book also takes a detailed look of how the French created a PKI to deal with digital signatures for many of their electronic documents.

I just started reading Burdens of Proof: Cryptographic Culture and Evidence Law in the Age of Electronic Documents and it is a fascinating book.

Full review to follow.