From: Evan Leibovitch via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org>
On Tue, Apr 7, 2026 at 5:54 AM CAREY SCHUG via Talk <talk@lists.gtalug.org> wrote:
I'm guessing "faxing is a thing" because some law requires it and has not
been updated.
More likely internal policy than law.
My impression is that 1) FAX became custom. Part of that is convincing lawyers not to resist. Lawyers seem to accept security theatre when convenient. How many email footers say, in effect, "if you are not the intended recipient, stop reading, from the top of the page." Silly. They gave in on FAXes generations ago. 2) it is hard to come up with a generic, secure, entity-to-entity messaging system. I know that when I talk to lawyers, I try to set up such a system but it costs time and money and frustration. Such systems tend to stumble on authentication. Cryptography is a solved problem (if you aren't scared of quantum attacks). Authentication can come down to an identity scheme. What one? How to verify? Does it make sense to the users? FAX uses phone numbers as identity (and blind trust). Maybe this is something Estonia has solved with its digital ID system. But you need to authenticate roles, not just individuals. I guess X.509 certs could do the job but they seem to complicated, unwieldy, and expensive for individuals.