261
UK plan to digitise wills and destroy paper originals "insane" say experts
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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The answer seems simple. Digitise the wills and any of historical value as identified by an independent body made up of Twitter historians can keep the originals for prosperity and research 😂.
Digitise the lot and start with new wills. I understand the value to historians of keeping old pieces of paper but at some point the costs of that have to be evaluated against the benefits. You can't just say "it's of an unquantifiable amount therefore we need to keep them", that's such a lazy cop out.
In fact I'm increasingly frustrated that all legal documents aren't digitised. Shuffling paper around is so backwards and a nightmare to search and index efficiently.
If I care about data never being altered without permission then paper wins over digital, no contest. Paper is not immune to forgery but you can't automate breaking into millions of physical buildings to target certain individuals or mass destroy the documents.
That is why countries using electronic voting machines over paper should be considered an act of the poor, ignorance or corruption.
"Hanging chads" on paper ballots helped Bush swing/steal the election from Gore. Paper ballots have a lot of problems too. At least in California every vote on an electronic voting machine generates a paper ballot.
Paper systems have problems and years of experience solving them. Multiple parties with different interests watch to verify the input and counting process. Electronic is not watchable, tye result is unverifable - it's not fit for purpose.