Minnesota Notarizes Deeds Over Video. The Identity Test Is Harder Than the One in the Room — and NIST Says Half of It Should Not Be Used.

In 1907 the Minnesota Supreme Court paused in the middle of a notary-liability opinion to register its alarm at a rumor: “And yet we were recently advised on the argument of a cause that reputable notaries are accustomed to take acknowledgments over the telephone.” Barnard v. Schuler, 100 Minn. 289, 290, 110 N.W. 966 (1907). The court found that scandalous. A notary who has never laid eyes on the signer cannot honestly certify that the signer is the person described in the instrument, and Barnard affirmed a $1,000 verdict against a notary who took an impostor’s acknowledgment on a mortgage after two men in his office introduced her, one of them claiming to be her brother.

One hundred and eleven years later the legislature authorized the video version of exactly that, and did it with more care than most people realize. Minnesota’s Remote Online Notarization Act took effect January 1, 2019 — a full year before any pandemic gave anyone a reason to want it. Laws 2018, ch. 176, art. 1, § 30. Minnesota did not scramble into remote notarization. It walked in early, and it wrote a quantified identity standard that an in-person notary has never had to meet.

That is the first thing worth knowing. The second is that the identity standard’s centerpiece is a method the National Institute of Standards and Technology now says shall not be used.

What is actually in chapter 358

Chapter 358 is two statutes wearing one number. Sections 358.01 through 358.50 are the old furniture — private seals abolished, forms of oath, affirmation in lieu of oath, ex officio notaries, unsworn foreign declarations at § 358.115, court documents at § 358.116. Most of that range is dead: 37 of the 54 section numbers between 358.01 and 358.50 are repealed or marked obsolete, and §§ 358.16 through 358.21 and 358.28 through 358.31 carry the wonderful notation “MS 1949 [Obsolete].”

Sections 358.51 through 358.76 are the live law: Minnesota’s enactment of the Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts, adopted by Laws 2018, ch. 176, art. 1, which repealed §§ 358.41 to 358.49 and § 359.12 outright. Inside that range the two sections that matter to a real estate file are § 358.645, the Remote Online Notarization Act, and § 358.646, which tells a county recorder what to do with a paper printout of an electronic document.

Commissioning lives somewhere else entirely. A notary is appointed and commissioned under chapter 359 — governor’s appointment with senate consent, applications through the secretary of state, a $120 nonrefundable application fee, a five-year term running to January 31 of the fifth year after issuance. Minn. Stat. §§ 359.01, subds. 1, 3; 359.02. A remote online notary is a chapter 359 notary first and a remote online notary second. § 358.645, subd. 2(a)(1).

Does the signer still have to appear?

Yes — but “appear” was redefined. Section 358.56 is one sentence, and its opening clause carries the whole subject:

Except as otherwise provided in section 358.645, if a notarial act relates to a statement made in or a signature executed on a record, the individual making the statement or executing the signature shall appear personally before the notarial officer.

Section 358.645, subd. 1(b), then supplies the exception by rewriting the verb. “Appear,” “personally appear,” or “in the presence of” means either “being in the same physical location as another person and close enough to see, hear, communicate with, and exchange tangible identification credentials with that individual,” or “interacting with another individual by means of communication technology as defined in this section.”

And subdivision 7(e) closes the loop for every other statute in Minnesota that uses the words: “A remote online notarial act meeting the requirements of this section satisfies the requirement of any law of this state relating to a notarial act that requires a principal to appear or personally appear before a notary or that the notarial act be performed in the presence of a notary.”

The technology carries a definition of its own. “Communication technology” is “an electronic device or process that allows a notary public physically located in this state and a remotely located individual to communicate with each other simultaneously by sight and sound and that, as necessary, makes reasonable accommodation for individuals with vision, hearing, or speech impairments.” § 358.645, subd. 1(c). Simultaneous sight and sound. Not a phone call, and not a recorded video.

Geography runs one direction only. The notary must be physically in Minnesota for every remote online notarial act. § 358.645, subd. 3(a). The signer may be in Minnesota, anywhere else in the United States, or outside the United States — and the foreign case carries two conditions: the notary must have no actual knowledge that the act is prohibited where the signer is standing, and the signer must confirm that the document is part of or pertains to a matter before a United States court or entity, relates to property located in the United States, or relates to a transaction substantially connected to the United States. § 358.645, subd. 3(a)(3).

The identity test, and why it is stricter than the one in the room

Here is the part that decides fraud cases. Compare what the statute demands of a notary sitting across a table from you with what it demands of a notary on a screen.

An in-person notary satisfies § 358.55, subd. 1, through § 358.57. Personal knowledge means the signer “is personally known to the officer through dealings sufficient to provide reasonable certainty that the individual has the identity claimed.” § 358.57, subd. 1. Otherwise the notary needs “satisfactory evidence,” which subdivision 2 defines as identification by

(1) by means of: (i) a passport, driver’s license, or government-issued nondriver identification card that is currently valid; or (ii) another form of government identification issued to an individual that is currently valid, contains the individual’s signature or a photograph of the individual, and is satisfactory to the officer; or (2) by a verification on oath or affirmation of a credible witness personally appearing before the officer and known to the officer or whom the officer can identify on the basis of a passport, driver’s license, or government-issued nondriver identification card that is current or expired not more than three years before performance of the notarial act.

Read that again. In the room, a current driver’s license is the whole test. The notary looks at the card, looks at the face, and signs. Nothing in § 358.57 requires the notary to authenticate the card, run it against any database, or ask the signer a single question. Subdivision 3 permits the notary to demand more; it does not require it.

Now the remote version. Section 358.645, subd. 7(b), gives a remote online notary two routes and no third:

Identity may be verified by: (1) the remote online notary public’s personal knowledge of the person creating the electronic signature; or (2) all of the following: (i) remote presentation by the person creating the electronic signature of a currently valid government-issued identification credential, including a passport or driver’s license, that contains the signature and a photograph of the person; (ii) credential analysis of the credential described in item (i); and (iii) identity proofing of the person described in item (i).

All three. Not any of the three. “Credential analysis” is “an automated software- or hardware-based process or service through which a third person affirms the validity of a government-issued identification credential through review of public or proprietary data sources.” § 358.645, subd. 1(d). “Identity proofing” is “a process or service through which a third person affirms the identity of an individual through review of personal information from public or proprietary data sources, and that may include dynamic knowledge-based authentication or biometric verification.” § 358.645, subd. 1(h). “Remote presentation” is transmission of an image of the credential “of sufficient quality” to let the notary identify the signer and perform credential analysis. § 358.645, subd. 1(n).

Then subdivision 5 does something statutes almost never do — it counts:

(1) Identity proofing shall include knowledge-based authentication with these or greater security characteristics: (i) The signer must be presented with five or more questions with a minimum of five possible answer choices per question. (ii) Each question must be drawn from a third-party provider of public and proprietary data sources and be identifiable to the signer’s social security number or other identification information, or the signer’s identity and historical events records. (iii) Responses to all questions must be made within a two-minute time constraint. (iv) The signer must answer a minimum of 80 percent of the questions correctly. (v) The signer may be offered an additional attempt in the event of a failed first attempt. (vi) During the second attempt, the signer may not be presented with more than three questions from the prior attempt.

(2) Credential analysis must confirm that the credential is valid and matches the signer’s claimed identity using one or more automated software or hardware processes that scan the credential, including its format features, data, bar codes, or other security elements.

Five questions, five choices each, 120 seconds, 80 percent, one retry, no more than three repeats. That is a harder gate than a glance at a laminated card, and anyone arguing that a remote notarization is inherently the weaker act has the statute backwards.

The credible-witness row is the most useful line in that table. Under § 358.57, subd. 2(2), a stranger can be notarized in person on the oath of a friend whose own driver’s license expired two years ago. Section 358.645 has no counterpart. On video, a warm body vouching for you is worth nothing.

The problem with subdivision 5

Minnesota hard-coded knowledge-based authentication into the statute as the identity-proofing floor. NIST has since taken the opposite position.

NIST Special Publication 800-63A-4, Digital Identity Guidelines: Identity Proofing and Enrollment (July 2025), lists the permitted methods for linking a claimed identity to the live human being in front of the system — confirmation-code verification, authentication and federation protocols, transaction verification, visual facial image comparison on-site or remote, automated biometric comparison — and then ends § 2.5.1 with one flat sentence:

Knowledge-based verification (KBV) or knowledge-based authentication SHALL NOT be used for identity verification.

NIST SP 800-63A-4 § 2.5.1, at 15. In NIST’s usage “SHALL NOT” is an absolute prohibition, and KBV is defined in the same document as “a process of validating the knowledge of personal or private information associated with an individual for the purpose of verifying the claimed identity of an applicant.”

I read the two documents together this way. Minn. Stat. § 358.645, subd. 5(1), sets a floor — “with these or greater security characteristics” — not a ceiling, and subdivision 1(h) expressly contemplates biometric verification as an alternative form of identity proofing. Nothing in the statute stops a Minnesota platform from layering automated biometric comparison on top of the quiz. But nothing in the statute lets it drop the quiz either, because subdivision 5 says identity proofing “shall include” knowledge-based authentication. Minnesota therefore mandates, as a matter of black-letter state law, the one verification method the federal standards body’s own guidelines flatly forbid. NIST guidance is not Minnesota law and does not purport to be — the guidelines bind federal agencies and function as the reference standard for everyone else — but a state statute that compels the method the reference standard prohibits is a gap the legislature should close. Until it does, the audiovisual recording is doing more evidentiary work than the questions are.

Registration, the journal, and the ten-year tape

A commissioned Minnesota notary is not a remote online notary until the notary says so in writing. “Before a notary performs a remote online notarization, the notary must register the capability to perform notarial acts pursuant to this section with the secretary of state and must certify that the notary intends to use communication technology that conforms to this section.” § 358.645, subd. 2(b). That sentence has said what it says only since 2024; before Laws 2024, ch. 112, art. 2, § 66, it pointed the notary to the electronic-notarization registration in § 359.01, subd. 5, which is a different thing. A notary who registered once, years ago, to notarize electronic records has not thereby registered to notarize over video. Registration runs as long as the underlying commission. § 358.645, subd. 2(c). The secretary of state may reject an application; the commissioner of commerce may revoke a registration for noncompliance with subdivisions 2 through 6. § 358.645, subd. 2(e). Two agencies, two levers.

That split is worth remembering when you are trying to find out whether a notarization was authorized at all. The secretary of state maintains an electronic database “through which a person may verify the authority of a notary public to perform notarial acts, including notarial acts pursuant to section 358.645, and to perform notarial acts on electronic records.” § 358.71, as amended by Laws 2024, ch. 112, art. 2, § 67. That statute is the reason you never have to take a remote notarization’s authority on faith.

The recordkeeping is where the remote act leaves a trail that a paper act does not. The remote online notary must keep a secure electronic journal containing, for each act, the date and time, the type of notarial act, a description of the document, the printed name and address of each principal, evidence of identity in one of three specified forms, and the fee charged. § 358.645, subd. 4(a). Separately, the notary “shall create an audio and video copy of the performance of the notarial act.” § 358.645, subd. 4(b). And then the retention rule:

The electronic journal required by paragraph (a) and the recordings required by paragraph (b) shall be maintained for at least ten years after the date of the transaction or proceeding.

§ 358.645, subd. 4(d). The notary may designate the employer or another qualifying repository by written agreement, but the ten years do not move.

Now put that against the paper world. Neither chapter 358 nor chapter 359 requires a Minnesota notary to keep a journal of an ordinary in-person notarization. Section 359.03 is captioned “STAMP; REGISTER,” and subdivision 1 mentions “the notary’s official journal” only to declare it the notary’s personal property, exempt from execution. Nothing anywhere commands the notary to keep one. So the ordinary acknowledgment on a warranty deed leaves behind a stamp and a signature. The remote one leaves behind six data points and a decade of video.

Two more provisions in § 358.645 that practitioners miss. Subdivision 12 pulls the journal and the recording out of the Government Data Practices Act and confines access to the individual whose signature was notarized, or that person’s guardian, conservator, attorney-in-fact, or personal representative — with release to a third party only on that person’s consent. If you want the tape and you are the party attacking the deed rather than the signer, you are going to need a subpoena, not a records request. And subdivision 3(c) capped the fee for a remote online notarial act at $25 only “if the act occurs before January 1, 2023.” That cap has been dead for more than three years. The general notary fee schedule at § 357.17 sets $5 figures for oaths and protests and, for “acknowledgments of deeds and for other services authorized by law,” only “the legal fees allowed other officers for like services.”

If the notarization was botched, is the deed void?

No. The statute answers this directly, and the answer surprises people who expect a defective notarization to be a title bomb. Section 358.73:

Except as otherwise provided in section 358.54, subdivision 2, the failure of a notarial officer to perform a duty or meet a requirement specified in sections 358.51 to 358.76 does not invalidate a notarial act performed by the notarial officer. The validity of a notarial act under sections 358.51 to 358.76 does not prevent an aggrieved person from seeking to invalidate the record or transaction that is the subject of the notarial act or from seeking other remedies based on law of this state other than sections 358.51 to 358.76 or law of the United States. This section does not validate a purported notarial act performed by an individual who does not have the authority to perform notarial acts.

Three moving parts. The default is no invalidation. The single carve-out is § 358.54, subd. 2 — a notary may not notarize a record to which the notary or the notary’s spouse is a party or in which either has a direct beneficial interest, and “[a] notarial act performed in violation of this subdivision is voidable.” Voidable, not void; someone has to move. And the closing sentence withholds the savings clause from a person with no authority to act at all.

The case law got there first, and went further. In Bank of Benson v. Hove, 45 Minn. 40, 47 N.W. 449 (1890), a bank cashier and stockholder took the acknowledgment on a chattel mortgage running to his own bank. The court framed the analysis in the two tracks every practitioner should be using:

The question of the validity or sufficiency of an acknowledgment is to be considered, first, as between the parties to the instrument; and, secondly, as to subsequent purchasers and mortgagees, who are chargeable with constructive notice by the record.

Id. at 43. On the first track the court needed one clause: “the mortgage was valid as between the parties to it, without an acknowledgment.” Id. On the second, the record still gave notice, “because an instrument so acknowledged, not disclosing the alleged disqualification of the notary, would be entitled to record and be notice to him, so that he was bound by it. Any other rule would destroy the reliability of the public records, and lead to most mischievous results.” Id. That was seventeen years before Barnard. Six years after Hove, in Bennett v. Knowles, 66 Minn. 4, 5, 68 N.W. 111 (1896), the court stated the general rule in a single clause: “unless otherwise provided by statute, an acknowledgment is no part of a written instrument, and that it is valid, although not recordable, without it.”

What a defective acknowledgment does to a recorded deed

Almost nothing, and there is a statute that says so.

The acknowledgment is what gets the instrument into the record in the first place. “To entitle any conveyance, power of attorney, or other instrument affecting real estate to be recorded, it shall be legible and archivable, it shall be executed, acknowledged by the parties executing the same, and the acknowledgment certified, as required by law.” Minn. Stat. § 507.24, subd. 1. Miss that and the recorder should refuse the document.

But once the recorder takes it, § 507.251, subd. 1, forgives essentially every defect that could have kept it out. Where an instrument affecting title has been recorded and there is apparent on its face “a defect in the attestation of the instrument, or the absence of any attestation, or a defect in the acknowledgment of the instrument or in the certification of the acknowledgment, or the absence of any certificate of acknowledgment, or a combination of two or more of such defects,” the instrument and its record “shall have the same force and effect as constructive notice and the same force and effect as evidence and the same force and effect for all purposes that they would have had if no such defect or omission” existed. Wills are excepted, and the recorder’s own liability for accepting an unrecordable document is preserved. Subds. 2, 3.

Section 358.646 does the same job for electronic documents printed to paper. A recorder must accept a paper copy of an electronic document certified by a Minnesota notary as a true and correct copy, and paragraph (h) adds that a document purporting to convey or encumber real property that has actually been recorded, “although the document may not have been certified according to this section, shall give the same notice to third persons and be effective from the time of recording as if the document had been certified according to this section.”

Put the pieces together and the practical rule is short. Attacking the notary is not a title strategy. Between grantor and grantee the deed stands without any acknowledgment at all. Against the world the recording gives notice even if the certificate is defective or missing. And § 358.60, subd. 3, adds that the signature and title of a Minnesota notary public — or of a judge, clerk, or deputy clerk of a Minnesota court — “conclusively establish the authority of the officer to perform the notarial act” — though subdivision 2 makes the signature itself only prima facie evidence that it is genuine, which is exactly the crack a forgery claim goes through.

Where a bad notarization really is fatal: the power of attorney

The deed is durable. The power of attorney is not, and the difference is a single statute.

Minn. Stat. § 523.01: “The power of attorney is validly executed when it is dated and signed by the principal and, in the case of a signature on behalf of the principal, by another, or by a mark, acknowledged by a notary public. Only powers of attorney validly created pursuant to this section or section 523.02 are validly executed powers of attorney for the purposes of sections 523.01 to 523.24.”

That is a statute making the acknowledgment part of what “validly executed” means, and then shutting the entire chapter to instruments that are not validly executed. It is the same architecture the supreme court identified in Bennett, where an assignment for the benefit of creditors was void because a statute said assignments must be acknowledged; the certificate there failed to show the signer’s authority to bind the corporation, and with the acknowledgment gone the assignment went with it. 66 Minn. at 5, 9. Section 523.05 then ties recordability of the power back to § 507.24.

So the answer to “does a defective notarization void the instrument” is not one answer. On a warranty deed or a transfer on death deed, the notarial defect is close to harmless. On a statutory power of attorney — the document a fraudster actually wants, because it manufactures authority to sign everything that comes after — the notarization is an element of validity. When someone brings me a suspicious remote closing, the power of attorney is the first document I pull, not the deed.

What does void a deed: forgery

The forged instrument is a different animal, and Minnesota has been unsentimental about it for more than a century.

In Trull v. Hammond, 71 Minn. 172, 73 N.W. 642 (1898), a mortgage satisfaction was forged and then acknowledged by the forger himself, sitting as notary. He admitted on the stand that the mortgagee “wasn’t in the state. I never saw him to my knowledge,” and then volunteered that “I knew his signature, and took his acknowledgment, the same as I have taken hundreds of others.” 71 Minn. at 174. The trial court declared the satisfaction “null and void” and ordered the record canceled, and the supreme court affirmed against the subsequent purchasers who had bought the land and pleaded that the mortgage was paid. Id. at 173, 178. Recording did not save it.

Registered land is no different at the root. In Baart v. Martin, 99 Minn. 197, 108 N.W. 945 (1906), a forged power of attorney produced a sham foreclosure and a forged deed, which produced a Torrens registration, which produced a certificate of title in a third party’s hands. The supreme court read a fraud exception into a Torrens act that contained none, held that a decree of registration obtained by fraud may be attacked so long as the land stands registered in the wrongdoer’s name, and stated the rule that still governs: “a registered proprietor can never be deprived of his title through the instrumentality of forged instruments.” 99 Minn. at 206. The court also drew the line the whole system runs on — “[w]hat we have said applies only so long as the land remains registered in the name of the fraudulent wrongdoer. When the rights of an innocent purchaser for value in reliance on the register are involved, other considerations prevail.” Id. at 212–13. That interaction, and the enumerated interests a certificate of title never cuts off, belong to Torrens practice.

The lesson for anyone litigating a fraudulent conveyance is a matter of pleading. Do not plead that the notarization was irregular. Section 358.73 will eat that claim. Plead that the signature is not the owner’s — and then use the ten years of audiovisual recording that § 358.645, subd. 4, forced the notary to keep to prove who was actually sitting in front of the camera.

The unregistered notary — an open seam

Here is a question the statute does not resolve cleanly, and I expect to see it litigated. Suppose a commissioned Minnesota notary performs a notarization over video without ever registering under § 358.645, subd. 2(b). Is the act saved by § 358.73?

Two readings collide. Section 358.73 saves a notarial act from “the failure of a notarial officer to perform a duty or meet a requirement specified in sections 358.51 to 358.76,” and withholds that protection only from an individual “who does not have the authority to perform notarial acts” — which a commissioned notary plainly has. On that reading the failure to register is a violation with disciplinary consequences and no title consequences.

But § 358.645, subd. 3(a), authorizes a remote online notarial act only by “a remote online notary public,” and subdivision 1(m) defines that term as “a notary public who has registered with the secretary of state to perform remote online notarizations.” An unregistered notary is not one. And subdivision 10 is a conflict clause: “In the event of a conflict between this section and any other law in this state, this section shall prevail.”

I read subdivision 10 to control. Section 358.645 is the more specific statute, it says so itself, and reading § 358.73 to launder an unauthorized remote act would make the registration requirement in subdivision 2(b) unenforceable in the only setting where enforcement matters. Even so, the practical damage is contained: § 507.251, subd. 1, still preserves constructive notice from the recording, and § 358.646(h) still makes an uncertified recorded document effective from the time of recording as to third persons. The remedy runs against the notary, not against the chain of title. The seam is real, and it is narrower than it looks.

The notary’s exposure, and what is no longer behind it

Barnard v. Schuler is still the rule, and it is a negligence rule. The court rejected absolute liability — “[a] notary public or other officer in taking an acknowledgment may be deceived, no matter how careful he may be” — and then, on the next page, refused the good-faith excuse: “It is not a defense in such a case that he acted in good faith and did the best he knew how; for, if he does not personally know the party appearing before him, he must inform himself as to his identity.” 100 Minn. at 291, 292. The holding follows in the next paragraph:

If a notary public certifies to an acknowledgment of an instrument without such personal knowledge and investigation, he is guilty of negligence, and he and his sureties are liable for all damages proximately resulting therefrom.

Id.

The sureties are gone. Barnard rested on R.L. 1905, § 2657, which required a notary to post a bond conditioned on faithful discharge of the office. That section survives today as Minn. Stat. § 359.02, which sets a five-year term and says nothing about a bond. Chapter 359 does not use the word “bond,” “surety,” or “insurance” anywhere in its current text, and the 1997 edition did not either. Chapter 358 uses “bond” exactly twice, both of them in § 358.11, which says only where to file an oath when some other law requires the person taking it to post one; “surety” and “insurance” appear nowhere in either chapter. Minnesota requires no notary bond, no errors-and-omissions coverage, and no financial responsibility of any kind. It also strips away the consolation prize: “A commission to act as a notary public authorizes the notary public to perform notarial acts. The commission does not provide the notary public any immunity or benefit conferred by law of this state on public officials or employees.” § 359.01, subd. 6.

So the modern Minnesota notary is personally liable in negligence under Barnard, with no bond behind the judgment and no official immunity in front of it. That is the whole private remedy. There is no statutory cause of action against a notary anywhere in chapter 358 or 359, and no statutory damages figure.

Public enforcement runs through the Department of Commerce. Section 358.70, subd. 1, gives the commissioner “all the powers provided by section 45.027” against a notary for any act or omission demonstrating a lack of “honesty, integrity, competence, or reliability,” and enumerates eight grounds — including failure to comply with §§ 358.51 to 358.76, a conviction for any felony or crime involving fraud, dishonesty, or deceit, and discipline of a notary commission in another state. Section 45.027, subd. 6, carries a civil penalty “not to exceed $10,000 per violation,” and subdivisions 5 and 5a add injunctive relief and cease-and-desist authority. A notary may be removed from office only by the governor, the district court, or the commissioner. § 358.70, subd. 2. And none of it is exclusive: subdivision 4 preserves “other criminal or civil remedies provided by law.”

The criminal edge is thinner than the 1907 court would have liked. Barnard could point to a statute making it a misdemeanor for a notary to sign a certificate of acknowledgment when the party had not personally appeared. 100 Minn. at 290. Nothing like that survives. Section 2661 has a descendant — the Revisor’s history line for § 359.08 traces that section to “RL s 2661” — but what is left of it reaches only a notary who keeps working after the commission runs out. Chapters 358 and 359 create exactly three offenses of their own: § 359.08 (exercising the duties of the office after the term expires or when otherwise disqualified), § 359.062, para. (b) (violating the foreign-language notice requirement), and § 358.645, subd. 9 (knowingly obtaining, concealing, damaging, or destroying, without authorization, “the certificate, disk, coding, card, program, software, or hardware” that lets a remote online notary affix an electronic signature or seal). All three are misdemeanors. None of them is the false certificate. The only other criminal reference in either chapter is § 358.116’s reminder that a person who signs a court document knowing it to be false “is guilty of perjury under section 609.48” — and that one runs against the signer, not the notary.

The forged-credential problem, in one section

Credential analysis under § 358.645, subd. 5(2), has to confirm that the credential “is valid and matches the signer’s claimed identity using one or more automated software or hardware processes that scan the credential, including its format features, data, bar codes, or other security elements.” Strip the language away and that is a machine reading a picture of a card that arrived over a video link.

NIST addressed this directly in § 3.14 of SP 800-63A-4, and I will let the agency speak: “Many emerging attacks on both attended and unattended remote identity proofing processes pair digital injection attacks with increasingly effective and available generative AI tools.” NIST then imposes six requirements on credential service providers running remote proofing — three mandatory, three recommended. The mandatory ones require technical controls increasing confidence that the media came from a genuine sensor, analysis of all submitted media “for artifacts and indicators of potential modification, manipulation, tampering, or forgery” with the algorithms tested against known attack artifacts and their false-negative rates documented, and authenticated protected channels. The recommended ones include analyzing media “for signatures of generative AI algorithms and deepfake tools that are known to be used to create forged digital media.” And then the sentence no vendor will put in a brochure: “However, even these mechanisms are not sufficient to address all possible cases of these kinds of attacks.”

I am not going to describe methods, and none of the details would help a lawyer anyway. What matters for a Minnesota file is structural. The statute’s identity architecture is one automated read of a transmitted card image plus a quiz NIST prohibits, and the only piece of it that produces evidence a factfinder can weigh years later is the ten-year audiovisual recording. When the credential is the thing in dispute, the recording is the case. The federal complaint data on what is and is not actually documented about AI-assisted identity theft is worth reading before anyone assumes the volume is what the headlines suggest, and the mechanics of attacking a judgment on an account you never opened are a separate discipline with a separate first move.

One boundary worth stating plainly. A remote online notarization is not an electronic signature, and the two statutes do different work. Chapter 325L governs whether an electronic signature is attributable and enforceable at all; § 358.645 governs whether a notarial act performed over video counts as an appearance. Sections 358.51 to 358.76 “modify, limit, and supersede” the federal E-SIGN Act except for 15 U.S.C. § 7001(c) and the § 7003(b) notices. § 358.76. If your problem is whether the signature binds the signer, that is electronic signature law, not notarial law.

What I do with a remote notarization I do not trust

I ask for the tape. Section 358.645, subd. 4(b) and (d), guarantees that a recording exists and that it exists for ten years, and subdivision 12 tells me exactly whose consent or whose subpoena I need to get it. Then I check the secretary of state’s database under § 358.71 to confirm the notary was registered for remote acts on the date of the act — not merely commissioned. Then I read the certificate against § 358.645, subd. 7(d) — “[t]he electronic notarial certificate for a remote online notarization must include a notation that the notarization is a remote online notarization” — and against subdivision 11, which requires the form to “indicate that the person appeared before the notary by means of communication technology if that was the method of the person’s appearance before the notary.” A remote notarization dressed up as an in-person one is a fact worth knowing early. Then I stop worrying about the notarization and start on the signature, because that is where the case is.

And if the transaction ran through a power of attorney, I go to § 523.01 first, because that is the one document in the stack where a defective acknowledgment is not a technicality.

Madgett Law, LLC handles real property disputes in Minnesota — quiet title and reformation actions, deeds and powers of attorney procured by fraud or forgery, defects in the recorded chain, and claims against the parties whose verification failures let a bad instrument reach the register. If a document affecting your property was notarized over video and you do not believe you were on the other end of it, call 612-470-6529 or send us a message.

Sources: Minn. Stat. § 358.11 (where an oath is filed — the only place chapter 358 uses the word “bond”); § 358.116 (court documents; a person who signs one knowing it false is guilty of perjury under § 609.48); § 358.52, subds. 2, 6, 7, 8, 11 (definitions of acknowledgment, notarial act, notarial officer, notary public, record); § 358.54, subds. 1, 2 (source of authority; self-interest limitation and voidability); § 358.55, subd. 1 (determinations required to take an acknowledgment); § 358.56 (personal appearance required, subject to § 358.645); § 358.57, subds. 1, 2, 3 (personal knowledge; satisfactory evidence by current government ID or credible witness whose ID is current or expired not more than three years; discretion to require more); § 358.60, subds. 1, 2, 3 (who may perform a notarial act in this state; prima facie genuineness of signature; conclusive establishment of authority); § 358.645, subd. 1(b), (c), (d), (h), (m), (n) (definitions of appear, communication technology, credential analysis, identity proofing, remote online notary public, remote presentation), subd. 2(a), (b), (c), (e) (chapter 359 commission; registration with the secretary of state; term; rejection by the secretary of state and revocation by the commissioner of commerce), subd. 3(a), (c) (notary must be physically in Minnesota, signer’s permitted locations and the outside-the-United-States conditions; $25 fee cap for acts before January 1, 2023), subd. 4(a), (b), (d) (six enumerated journal contents; audio and video copy; ten-year retention and repository designation), subd. 5(1), (2) (knowledge-based authentication minimum standards — five or more questions, five answer choices, two-minute constraint, 80 percent, one additional attempt, no more than three repeated questions; credential analysis scan requirements), subd. 7(b), (d), (e) (two verification routes; certificate notation; satisfaction of any Minnesota personal-appearance requirement), subds. 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 (misdemeanor for wrongful possession of RON software or hardware; conflict clause; certificate form; data classification and access; short title); § 358.646(a)–(c), (h) (recording a paper copy of an electronic document; certification requirements; effect of a recorded but uncertified document); § 358.65, subds. 1, 4 (certificate requirements; what executing a certificate certifies); § 358.70, subds. 1, 2, 4 (grounds for discipline and incorporation of § 45.027; removal from office; other remedies preserved); § 358.71 (secretary of state database for verifying authority, including RON authority); § 358.73 (failure to perform a duty does not invalidate the notarial act; § 358.54, subd. 2 exception; no validation of an act by a person without authority); § 358.76 (relation to E-SIGN); § 359.01, subds. 1, 3, 6 (appointment and commission; $120 application fee; no immunity or public-employee benefit); § 359.02 (five-year term; successor to R.L. 1905, § 2657; no bond); § 359.03, subd. 1 (official stamp required; journal and stamp are the notary’s personal property); § 359.062, para. (b) (misdemeanor for violating the foreign-language notice requirement); § 359.08 (misdemeanor for acting after expiration or when disqualified); § 45.027, subds. 5, 5a, 6 (injunctions; cease and desist; civil penalty not to exceed $10,000 per violation); § 357.17(5), (6) (notary fee schedule); § 507.24, subd. 1 (what entitles an instrument affecting real estate to be recorded); § 507.251, subds. 1, 2, 3 (defective or absent acknowledgment does not impair constructive notice; wills excepted; recorder’s liability preserved); § 523.01 (a power of attorney is validly executed when dated, signed, and acknowledged by a notary public; only validly executed powers carry chapter 523); § 523.05 (recordability of a power of attorney tied to § 507.24) — all verified at revisor.mn.gov, and the 1997 edition of chapter 359 against the Revisor’s statutory archive at revisor.mn.gov/statutes/1997/cite/359. Laws 2018, ch. 176, art. 1, § 15 (enacting § 358.645), § 29 (repealing §§ 358.41–358.49 and § 359.12), § 30 (“This act is effective January 1, 2019.”); Laws 2024, ch. 112, art. 2, §§ 66, 67 (separating remote online notarization registration from electronic-notarization registration; amending § 358.71); Laws 1993, ch. 354, § 3 (amending § 359.02, then captioned “TERM, BOND, OATH, REAPPOINTMENT”), all from revisor.mn.gov session law texts. Bank of Benson v. Hove, 45 Minn. 40, 43, 47 N.W. 449 (1890) (two-track analysis of a defective acknowledgment; mortgage valid between the parties without acknowledgment; record still notice); Bennett v. Knowles, 66 Minn. 4, 5, 6, 9, 68 N.W. 111 (1896) (acknowledgment is no part of a written instrument absent a statute; the two essential elements of a certificate; statutory assignment void without a sufficient acknowledgment); Trull v. Hammond, 71 Minn. 172, 173, 174, 178, 73 N.W. 642 (1898) (forged satisfaction acknowledged by the forger declared null and void and the record canceled); Baart v. Martin, 99 Minn. 197, 206, 212–13, 108 N.W. 945 (1906) (a registered proprietor can never be deprived of title through forged instruments; fraud exception read into the Torrens act; limits once an innocent purchaser for value is involved); Barnard v. Schuler, 100 Minn. 289, 290, 291, 292, 110 N.W. 966 (1907) (the R.L. 1905 bond requirement, the two essential matters an officer must determine, the R.L. 1905 misdemeanor for certifying without personal appearance, the $1,000 verdict, and the telephone-acknowledgment remark, all at 290; the rejection of absolute liability at 291; good faith no defense, and notary and sureties liable for proximately resulting damages, at 292) — all read in full at static.case.law (Caselaw Access Project), quoted from the opinion body rather than the reporter’s syllabus, reporter citations taken from CAP’s structured case metadata. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 800-63A-4, Digital Identity Guidelines: Identity Proofing and Enrollment (July 2025), § 2.5.1, at 15 (permitted identity verification methods, closing with “Knowledge-based verification (KBV) or knowledge-based authentication SHALL NOT be used for identity verification.”), § 3.14, at 33–34 (digital injection prevention and forged media detection: the generative-AI framing of the threat, the concession that “even these mechanisms are not sufficient to address all possible cases of these kinds of attacks,” and the six numbered requirements for remote proofing — three SHALL, three SHOULD — plus two additional requirements for attended collection), and glossary (definition of knowledge-based verification, quoted lowercase mid-sentence from a glossary entry that begins with a capital “A”), verified in the published PDF at nvlpubs.nist.gov (NIST.SP.800-63a-4.pdf) and against the HTML edition at pages.nist.gov.

This article is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship with Madgett Law, LLC. No outcome is promised or implied.