The supplier's signature — terms used precisely
Terms are defined as they are used in this package. Where a word has a looser everyday sense, the looser sense is named so the two do not get confused.
A statement about a record made by a party other than its author — typically a signature, a timestamp, or both. Distinguished from a record, which is the statement itself, and from an integrity check, which says only that bytes have not changed. An attestation does not make the underlying claim true; it narrows the set of stories that can be told about it.
A deterministic way of turning structured data into bytes, so the same data always produces the same bytes. Necessary for any hash that a third party is expected to reproduce: two JSON documents can carry identical data and differ in key order or whitespace, and would then hash differently. Without canonicalisation a fingerprint proves something only to whoever generated it.
A fixed-length fingerprint computed from bytes — here SHA-256. Changing a single character changes the fingerprint completely. It answers “have these bytes changed?” and nothing else: not when, not who.
An elliptic-curve digital signature scheme, specified in RFC 8032 (Edwards-Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, IRTF Informational, January 2017). Widely implemented independently, which is what makes a signature checkable by someone who does not trust the signer’s software. Note the document’s status: a specification, not an IETF standards-track standard.
Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 on electronic identification and trust services. Two articles matter here. Article 41 gives a qualified electronic time stamp a presumption of accuracy in EU law. A token from an ordinary, non-qualified authority does not attract that presumption even within the Union. eIDAS is EU law; what weight a New Zealand tribunal would give such a token is a question for a lawyer in that jurisdiction.
This is a description of the instruments, not legal advice.
The order in which a contested decision moves upward inside an organisation. In the system described here it is data supplied by the organisation, not a structure the software imposes — the tool follows the chain it is given and has no opinion about what the chain should be.
Plain-English synonym for content hash, used in member-facing copy where “hash” would obscure rather than clarify.
A check that content has not changed. Weaker than an attestation: it involves no third party and says nothing about time or authorship.
A fact a tribunal must accept unless it is rebutted, as distinct from evidence a tribunal weighs. The distinction is the entire practical difference between a qualified and a non-qualified timestamp, and the reason the word “qualified” is not decoration.
Under eIDAS, a timestamp from a provider meeting the Regulation’s requirements for qualified trust service providers. Carries the Article 41 presumption. Not what an ordinary RFC 3161 authority issues.
A statement that something happened — for instance, that this copy was approved by this person at this time. Its correctness rests on the trustworthiness of whoever holds it, which is precisely the thing in dispute when it matters.
Internet X.509 Public Key Infrastructure Time-Stamp Protocol (TSP) — IETF standards-track. Defines how a party obtains a signed statement from a timestamp authority that a given fingerprint existed at a given moment. The authority sees only the fingerprint, so it cannot know what it has dated.
The term this package uses for what a third party can actually verify when the signing key is held by the platform rather than the organisation. It is evidence that a particular supplier attested to particular bytes at a particular time. It is not the organisation’s own signature, and calling it one would be the central overstatement this package exists to avoid.
The outside party that issues an RFC 3161 token. Its value comes from having no stake in the dispute and from its own signature being independently checkable — not from any claim about its virtue. The same logic as a will witnessed by someone who does not inherit.
Copy citing a policy the organisation has retired. In the system described here this is the single case where the software blocks a member’s draft outright — on the reasoning that a member cannot reasonably be expected to know a policy was retired last week. If the policy returns, the copy returns to the status it previously held, recorded as a restoration rather than a fresh approval.