YEARS OF EUROPEAN ONLINE ANNÉES DE EN LIGNE ...

modiication and that the text read today is strictly identical to text irst released
perhaps 50 years ago.
webster’s 1913 dictionary deines authenticity as ‘the quality of being authentic
or of established authority for truth and correctness’. It also refers to
genuineness; the quality of being genuine or not corrupted from the original.
In the electronic world and in digital materials, authenticity means that the
digital material is what it purports to be. In the case of electronic documents,
such as electronic legal gazettes, it refers to the trustworthiness of the electronic
document as a document. the authentic version could be described as
the complete digital image of the paper version. In the case of originally digital
(‘born digital’) or digitised materials, it refers to the fact that whatever is being
cited is the same as it was when it was irst created, unless the accompanying
metadata (e.g. on the amendments or the consolidation of the law) indicate
any changes.
On 15 September 2001, the International Organisation for Standardisation
(ISO) published the standard ISO 15489-1, Information and documentation
— Records management. this standard, in Clause 7.2.2, deines authenticity:
‘An authentic record is one that can be proven (a) to be what it purports to be,
(b) to have been created or sent by the person purported to have created or
sent it, and (c) to have been created or sent at the time purported.
to ensure the authenticity or records, organisations should implement
and document policies and procedures which control the creation, receipt,
transmission, maintenance and disposition of records to ensure that records
creators are authorised and identiied and that records are protected against
unauthorised addition, deletion, alteration, use and concealment.’
Authentication can be deined as the process of verifying that a document
or message is authentic and that is has not been altered en route from the producer
of the document to the recipient(s). Authentication systems have become
an essential part of electronic commerce and e-government via the Internet.
Based on a range of encryption techniques, digital signature systems allow
organisations and individuals to electronically certify the authenticity of an
electronic document. Authentication has also another meaning — the authorisation
of a person to access an electronic system.
Chain of conidence
A chain of conidence (chaîne de confiance) is a reliable process for producing
electronic documents, which can be authentic and oficial. Usually the chain of
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