The UK government is planning to introduce its Building Confidence in Electronic Commerce bill in May or June, with final royal assent in the Spring next year, according to a new timetable announced by the Department of Trade and Industry.
The bill includes a response to the government invitation for public feedback on issues such as key escrow. The deadline for this consulting process ended on April 1 and the results will be released by the Trade and Industry select committee in the middle of this month, according to a DTI official. The bill will then probably be introduced to the house in June.
Along with key escrow, the bill will probably contain measures on electronic signatures, the granting of licenses to internet service providers and the liability of those ISPs, together with security agency access to stored data and the courtroom requirement to prove that an electronic signature has been forged.
These developments come two weeks after similar legal measures from the European Union to give digital signatures the same legal authority as written ones.
