##  Email sent to a couple of places: notably, a list I'm on where we discuss
##  end-of-life issues and knowledge.  I mostly started said list, as a
##  resource for other colleagues who 1> were going through the same sort
##  of thing, 2> would eventually have to, or 3> may have already.  This
##  tumbled out after my first "real" experience trying to use DocuSign.


Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2022 20:00:12
Subject: RANT: DocuSign when put to the test

I did have a somewhat directed purpose in advocating for this list to be
created, even if several years ago, for people to be able to share their
experiences in handling departed, or departING, loved ones.  There are a
lot of cold, logical mechanics that are a necessary part of the process.

So, my adventure is now just beginning.  My mom's in the process of being
referred to hospice, after having some kind of ... episode ... at her home
sometime Sunday night.  Details are still hazy and/or elided at this point,
but it's clear that the final decline is upon us.  She's basically been
unresponsive, albeit alive, for four days, without much sign of recovery.
In effect, the abstract construct that was my mom is gone, and all that's
left is the empty vessel that carried her -- a bag-of-mostly-water with only
its autonomous functions nominally intact, in continuing decline over some
unknown timeframe until it hits the slab.

Given that I'm her DPoA, healthcare proxy, co-trustee, beneficiary, etc etc
up the wazoo, it's incumbent upon me to serve as decision-maker for just about
everything, and since she and I were always in violent agreement that one's
end should be efficient and painless, she's got the "+8 DNR of Doom" firmly
in place -- and my full support behind it and expressed repeatedly to various
hospital personnel who call me.  So unless something super-weird transpires,
it won't be long now and then I'll be into that crazy phase of executorship
that we've all been researching and conjecturing about for a while now.  This
will involve my *third* trip to FL this year, where driving that route in
and EV and finding places to charge makes it all even more interesting.

In the meantime, the hospice people cheerfully informed me, "We need some
documents signed, and we use a service called DocuSign and we can do it all
over email, are you okay with that?"

Well, given what was likely coming down the pike on the legal front anyway, I
had actually sat down and researched Docusign a while back -- and not only had
a special dedicated browser environment set up to deal with it, I had signed
up and created my own account to have a reference point and a special target
email address to work from.  And invariably running into numerous bugs about
how their service works, had already filed three or four trouble tickets on
stuff that their developers really needed to dig in and fix.

Along with that, I had read and understood the legal standing of e-signatures,
and how they radically differ from "wet signatures" we scrawl onto paper.  The
tl;dr is that the *action* of a signer applying a mark or a completion, of any
sort regardless of visual form, with the surrounding records of time, email
addresses and IP addresses associated with it, etc are what make the capture
of intent clear and recorded.  And a lot of people still don't understand that,
thinking that a DocuSign "signature" had to look like some kind of cursive
scrawl -- even if it was *machine-generated* randomly on behalf of a signer
without their instigation or guidance.  In a word, bunkum.

So below is a rant I sent off today to a different list, after grinding through
the process of signing a couple of hospice admission documents and then
getting pushback that what I had applied was somehow wrong or unacceptable.
Mostly FYA, but there are several lessons embedded in here.

 ===

Date: Thu, 08 Sep 2022 17:58:26 -0500
Subject: [otherlist] docusign on the ground

Today was my first real go-round using Docusign for something real.  Rant...

First, the account I set up a month-plus ago to play with had gone through
its 30-day trial period and expired, and while the account was still there
and could do stuff, the custom "signature" graphics I had uploaded had gotten
gratuitously blown away in the process of "downgrading" to free tier rather
than trial tier.  So for this one-off signature process I had to regenerate
them and upload a new thingie to use.

Anyone who really understand what Docusign does, and the court precedents
around their type of e-signatures, will grok that the little cursive squiggles
they generate for you are no more a paper-oriented "wet signature" than an
animated gif of a penis bouncing up and down.  The contents of that graphic
absolutely doesn't matter, it's the procedure, the intent, and the electronic
records wrapped around the process that make it sufficiently binding.  Docu
has all kinds of articles about this, notably

 https://www.docusign.com/products/electronic-signature/legality/united-states/

on their website for perusal by the doubtful.  No, it's not traditional, but
perhaps has a chance to evolve into something even more solid if they ever
introduce some PKI to back it up.  That's a ways off, though.

Anyway, after fighting with their awful offshore support and finally learning
that I had indeed been downgraded to "free" but there was no clear indication
of that on the site, I ripped them a new one for deleting something associated
with my account that I had put work into, and went ahead with a fresh one.
The graphic incorporates my three-sided logo, .jpg-ized text containing a date
stamp, a unique "blockchain" tag to go with this transaction, and "_H*" at
the end.  Far more identifying and verifiable at BOTH ends than some copiable
bitmap scrawled onto a bad electronic pad.

And the other party to this particular transaction has the TEMERITY to start
giving me shit about this, because it doesn't "look like a signature".
Obstructionist fucks.  If they don't understand the differences, they
shouldn't be trying to use Docusign in the first place.

I expect that quite a few people are going to get a bit of education and
greater depth of view of their own processes before this episode is over.

_H*