By the time you read this, US President Bill Clinton and the Republic of Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern will have digitally signed a communique at a special ceremony in Dublin. This is believed to be the first occasion on which digital signatures have been used to authenticate an intergovernmental document. In the annals of great e-commerce firsts it should rank right up there with the US Treasury’s inaugural internet check (CI No 3,443). Before the ceremony, both Clinton and Ahern will be given smart cards, each containing a unique signing code and a digital certificate. To sign the communique, each leader will place his smart card into a reader and enter a private code. Everyone is then expected to be very impressed. The digital signature software to be used in the ceremony was supplied by Baltimore Technologies, a Dublin-based ecommerce startup.
