Position Paper for W3C Signed XML Workshop 

Satoru Tezuka HITACHI,Ltd. April 7,1999 

1.The needs of my company in the signed XML workshop 

As standard base technology of information system in future , we expect
very much to Signed XML. In order to actually use Signed XML as base
technology in the near future, we want to participate in this workshop,
and contribute to making Signed XML into a better standard by proposing
useful technology which we developed. 

2.Our general expectations on the final outputs of the workshop 

We consider that the standard which is the result of this workshop needs
to be that which can promote enough popularization of Signed XML to a
user. Therefore, Signed XML must have high security and be easy to use
it. Furthermore Signed XML must be understandable for a user.
Concretely, it is a necessary condition for popularization that a user
who refers to Signed XML content can check visually the verification
result of the signature added to the content without the special
operation. So a description rule for that needs has to be defined. Then,
in order to popularize Signed XML generally, we expect that the
following two requirements are contained in the final standard. 

- Operation easiness - Understandability of a verification result 

3.Our Proposal 

In order to fill the above-mentioned requirements, we propose
"Internet/Marks" technology which we developed, as one of the subjects
for discussion of this workshop. Internet/Marks are image data, such as
JPEG format, which include the certification information of contents
(legitimate URL etc.) using digital watermark technique. It offers high
security of content by putting digital signature into image data.
Moreover, if a user read the contents on which Internet/Marks was
embedded, the client program extracts the digital signature from
Internet/Marks and verify it. When a certain injustice is detected,
Client program shows it visually without user operation. As mentioned
above, Internet/Marks satisfies all the following requirements. 

- Higher security - Operation easiness - Understandability of a
verification result 

So far, we had mainly examined Internet/Marks as technology which gives
reliability to HTML content. However, since discussion of Signed XML
standard has started at W3C, we consider that Internet/Marks should not
be discussed as technology which is independent with Signed XML, and it
should be discussed as technology which complete mutually.