Observer 4/6/2000: "Your privacy ends here"

[Tom Thomson]

> http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,328071,00.html

...............................................

> Your privacy ends here
> How has this extraordinary state of affairs come about? Is it another
> manifestation of the cock-up theory of history, or are there more sinister
> forces at work? The answer is a bit of both. For some time, it has been
> obvious to Ministers and civil servants that British law needed updating
to
> cope with the internet. In an era when online trading becomes ubiquitous,
> for example, some way has to be found of making 'digital signatures'
legally
> valid. Accordingly, a special Cabinet Office unit headed by Professor Jim
> Norton set to work to devise a new legislative framework for the emerging
> world of e-commerce and online communications. The main result of his
labour
> was the Electronic Commerce Bill.


So government dis-information has won yet again.

There was absolutely nothing needed in British law to make digital
signatures
legally valid.  The law has always been quite clear.  Some tidying up may
have
been needed for certain legal documents that required a written and
witnessed
signature, but such things were the exception rather than the rule: for
almost
every purpose, a digital signature was always just as valid as a written
one.

If a respectable (?) newspaper can get this wrong in a serious article, how
much
hope can we have of educating the electorate so that they understand just
how
much the government is deliberately misleading them, lying to them,
deceiving
them in order to get through disastrously bad legislation without causing a
public
uproar?

Tom Thomson