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

[Nicholas Bohm]

At 04:07 PM 6/5/2000 +0100, Tom Thomson wrote:
>> 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.

I think this goes too far.

Digital signatures have always been perfectly acceptable as evidence of the
authenticity and integrity of things signed with them; but where statute
has required something to be signed it has almost always required it to be
in writing (expressly or by implication), and for most statutory purposes
"writing" and thus "signature" have not extended to things done
electronically (see the definition in the Interpretation Act 1978).

The virtue of the EC Act is that it enables things which previously
required a written signature to be done electronically, although more by
its extension of the notion of writing than that of signature.  It also
enables wider adaptations to be introduced than could have been achieved
just by extending the concept of writing - see the DTI proposals for
electronic equivalents of paper compliance with corporate requirements, for
example.

Regards,

Nicholas Bohm

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