I'm not sure that lowers the bar out of "incredibly difficult".
For instance, how would you feel if you heard the SEC invested in a bespoke technology for doing this just to mitigate a document timing issue only interesting to a very small number of market participants? I'd be upset about the waste of my tax dollars personally.
It doesn't have to be a SEC-specific thing. We can make it a general service - it publishes a public key + "release time" well in advance, then publish the public key at the exact "release time". This allows anyone to release information on the exact specified time.
Sort of like GPS - maintained by one party, useful for the whole world - but much simpler to implement.
I like this idea but you're not thinking big enough. The public key must be transmitted from space to avoid giving first mover advantage to those sneaky penguins.
Penguins might get a leg up on the information, but they won't be able to reach New Your Stock Exchange before those who live right next to it, so it all evens out.
The only creatures who are disadvantaged by this scheme are polar bears and others living way north of the stock exchange - they also get their data late, but can't compensate by shorter distance to exchange.
For instance, how would you feel if you heard the SEC invested in a bespoke technology for doing this just to mitigate a document timing issue only interesting to a very small number of market participants? I'd be upset about the waste of my tax dollars personally.