Last week's passage of a draft of the Electronic Signatures Law by the Cabinet last week is pre-mature, given that information technology related issues have not been properly addressed so far, critics said.
The proposed new law, which now awaits passage by the legislature, would define the legal status of so-called digital signatures -- unforgetable identification data that assert that a person wrote or otherwise agreed to the document to which the signature is attached and may be used to authenticate online transactions and other applications.
Legislators, some of who have prepared their own versions of the daft law, stress that the act is crucial to development of electronic governance and commerce in Taiwan because it acknowledges electronic records to be as legally binding as printed documents and would make an electronic signature as equally legally binding as a handwritten signature.
Some computer science experts, however, fear it is premature to create legislation governing the use of electronic signatures before either the government or the public have a genuine understanding of nature of what electronic signatures and how they are to be used.
"The main purpose of the legislation is to remove obstacles which might stand in the way of development of e-commerce. But it's a free market, and the market itself shall be able to decide the pattern of its operation, said Y.G. Tang (
Isn't it therefore too early to create the legislation at the moment, when we have very little idea of what that pattern might eventually be, Tang said.
Digital signiatures are not,however, completely new to Taiwan. They have been used in a number of activities in both the public and private sectors.
Paying taxes on-line is a precedent for public use of the technology, while in private busi-nesses, on-line stock transactions and signing contracts digitally have also been used for some time, even without legislation setting standards for security of such activities and defining exactly what form of digital signature might be binding.
Li said the legislation is set to resolve likely disputes of any legal relationships resulting from electronic activities. It's not simply to encourage development of e-commerce, he added.
Yet it is partly the explosion of e-commerce -- at the moment showing 400 percent annual growth, and now reckoned to be worth some US$3 billion a year, is the main reason for the government making the digital signature law a legislative priority.
The other incentive is the government's desire for a "paperless government," that is, to make the public sector more efficient by the greater use of information technologies.
In both these areas there is a need for a form of consent that can be given to an electronic document as legally bindng as a handwritten signature.
The status of electronic signatures has already been determined by legislation in Germany, Singapore, and some states in the US. The Taiwan government, where the existing market of e-commerce is estimated over US$3 billion, has also placed made it a priority to legislate use of electronic signature.
But experts like Tang still feel the system is neither mature nor secure.
"No security is guaranteed for this technology. However secure a device is, there are always people who can find ways to breach it. And that's the basic fact everyone should be aware of in the first place," Tang said.
Another skeptic about the rush to legislate in regard to digital signature is KMT legislator Huang Hsien-chou (
Such contracts then would fall under current regulations of the Civil Law and Civil Procedure Law which could be used to resolve disputes.
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