Since 12 September 2002, the Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato has been registered in the public list of certifiers of digital signatures held by AIPA, as the certification authority for Italian notaries. The digital signatures of Italian notaries may be verified on the site http://ca.notariato.it.
Based on the rules and the certification authority's operations manual, CNN certifies notaries' digital signatures in the exercise of their functions and so guarantees to third parties not only that the digital signature belongs to a particular person and was valid at the time it was appended, as any certifier does, but also that the owner of the signature is a practising notary.
This was a choice that was both needed and desired by Italian notaries:
- needed, because certification of practising status, in the public sector and for public officials in particular, is stipulated by law (Article 34 of Legislative Decree no.82/2005 as amended by Legislative Decree no. 159/2006 "The Digital Administration Code"), in order to guarantee that a document has the privileged force assigned to documents from a public authority;
- desired, because the notarial profession felt that the best way to provide a computerized notarial document with all the security and certainty guarantees as to its origin and content (and its overall legitimacy) that have always been the hallmark of a notarised document, was to take direct responsibility in this area without delegating to third parties the management of the procedures and the technology.
A notarised document offers certainty as to legitimacy and is a guarantee for the parties involved, but above all it is an assurance of the security of negotiations. It protects the general interests of society which must be ensured even as society evolves.
Moreover, the use of electronic documents is still in its infancy and it seemed necessary that notaries as a profession should be a player in a development process that may have important hidden pitfalls, and must be thought through from a technological point of view and an organizational point of view as well as in terms of the sharing of responsibility among the various players involved. Hence the choice (unique among the professions, and in common with only one other public sector body) to take on the role of certification authority having control and responsibility over the notarial functions.
In accordance with the rules, an organizational structure was chosen based, on the one hand, on the existence of a central authority dedicated solely and exclusively to the certification of notaries and, on the other, on compliance with the notarial law as regards the existence of notarial functions throughout the whole lifecycle of a digital signature (issuance, suspension and cancellation). It is fundamental, in order avoid the risk of improper use or falsification, that the digital signature of a public official should have a duration that is exactly equal to that of his functions, and that cancellation or suspension of signatures should be timely in the case where those functions cease (other than in everyday cases of theft, loss or malfunction). To this end, the structure of the certification authority is modelled, as the rules require, upon the method by which notaries are appointed at the start of their careers, at which time they receive their seal. So the President of the District Council of Notaries, as for the appointment of notaries in the District as per Article 24 of Law no. 89 of 16/2/1913, issues the digital signature for the exercise of notarial functions. In the same way, the procedure for suspension and cancellation of the signature are modelled on the procedures for interrupting or terminating the exercise of notarial functions, and such reasons for suspending or cancelling are in addition to the normal ones for any electronic signature.
But that is not all. The overall picture of electronic signatures, following Directive 99/93/CE and Legislative Decree 10/2002, has become even more complicated because of the new distinctions made, such as differentiating between a simple electronic signature and an advanced electronic signature. Without going into the maze of possible hypotheses, it should be pointed out that the above Directive considered any system of imputing an electronic document to an individual as a signature in order to prevent individual countries from legislating to discourage the use of electronic signatures.
One consequence, however, is that this generally dilutes the original intention of Italian lawmakers whereby a digital signature was equated with a physical signature only if it met certain precise technical requirements. In this highly variegated scenario, in which technological skill is not always matched by a culture of respect for legal documents, it is a matter of priority for the notarial profession to manage its own computerized documents and their security autonomously, in order to preserve their quality and value from both a technical and legal point of view, but more importantly in order to remain a key player in a question that is irreversibly influencing the nature and functions of legal documents, and in order to furnish practical experience in marrying technological and legal security with the simplification of procedures and the use of new technology.