The interesting thing about anti-fraud efforts like OpenTimestamps is often what they achieve is invisible, because they've discouraged fraud from happening at all.
I've experienced this myself: I was plaintiff in a lawsuit where timestamped evidence was damming to the defendant. Even though the evidence didn't have digital signatures, the defense didn't even try to contest the validity of it. I'm sure the timestamps helped them make that decision.
Previously in Guatemala, the timestamps on the tally sheets in the election did two main things:
1) They showed they the vast majority of tally sheets were filled out soon after the election officially ended, contesting claims of widespread fraud.
2) A significant subset of tally sheets had incorrect metadata times in the computer system that scanned them due to a timezone misconfiguration. OpenTimestamps provided evidence that this was just a timezone misconfiguration, not fraud, and the judiciary in the end accepted that evidence.
pkt / Peter Todd
npub1ej…3ndrm
2024-11-07 18:00:33
in reply to nevent1q…63kv
Author Public Key
npub1ej493cmun8y9h3082spg5uvt63jgtewneve526g7e2urca2afrxqm3ndrmPublished at
2024-11-07 18:00:33Event JSON
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"content": "The interesting thing about anti-fraud efforts like OpenTimestamps is often what they achieve is invisible, because they've discouraged fraud from happening at all.\n\nI've experienced this myself: I was plaintiff in a lawsuit where timestamped evidence was damming to the defendant. Even though the evidence didn't have digital signatures, the defense didn't even try to contest the validity of it. I'm sure the timestamps helped them make that decision.\n\nPreviously in Guatemala, the timestamps on the tally sheets in the election did two main things:\n\n1) They showed they the vast majority of tally sheets were filled out soon after the election officially ended, contesting claims of widespread fraud.\n\n2) A significant subset of tally sheets had incorrect metadata times in the computer system that scanned them due to a timezone misconfiguration. OpenTimestamps provided evidence that this was just a timezone misconfiguration, not fraud, and the judiciary in the end accepted that evidence.",
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