UN Body Attempts To Tackle Issue
     The problem is well illustrated in the UN Commission On International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), a body tapped to design international guidelines for using digital signatures and other types of electronic authentication in business transactions. Although the commission's rules won't be legally binding, countries could use them as a blueprint for making their own laws. After two years of work, the commission is aiming to have results by the spring of 2000. But the process has been slow — and, some would say, painstaking.
     "The movement internationally is moving faster than UNCITRAL," Bohannon said.
     The working group met this September to continue its labors and Renaud Sorieul, a senior legal officer with the commission, said the group is closer to consensus.
     "For the first time, we have a sense that things are moving, perhaps because the United States is no longer obstructing" the process, he said. "We are getting away from the old fights about digital signatures."
     The "old fights" followed a familiar script. Europeans pushed for a stronger regulatory approach to digital signatures while Americans wanted minimal regulation.
     "It makes it difficult even to agree what to discuss," Sorieul said.
     But Thomas Smedinghoff, a U.S. lawyer who deals with e-commerce issues and is involved with the UNCITRAL process, said the group is moving toward technology-neutral standards. This would mean the government does not determine which technology should be used in electronic signature transactions, which had been a major point of contention.
     Although this issue is almost cleared up, infighting remains over party autonomy, legal jargon for the rights of businesses to have freedom of contract in determining which terms and conditions can be specified in a transaction. It's this issue that could derail UNCITRAL's goal of getting something finished in 2000.

Business To The Rescue?
     Absent government-mandated solutions, standards could develop from other groups. Enter the international business community, which grappled with the issue out of necessity long before government got around to tackling it.
     "Government is playing catch-up on this," said Frank Kelly, vice president of government relations at Charles Schwab.
     Kelly said as countries increasingly develop their own digital signature legislation, harmonizing those laws will be critical for e-commerce to flourish.
     This is one reason the International Chamber of Commerce started developing a framework for ensuring and certification of digital messages in 1995. A working group on the issue produced the General Usage for International Digitally Ensured Commerce (GUIDEC), which outlined legal practices and business standards for ensuring digital signatures. David Fares, director of e-commerce for the International Chamber of Commerce, said the ICC came up with its own guidelines because the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law Model Law on Electronic Commerce (the UNCITRAL Model Law) was too general and that GUIDEC's standards are more specific.
     But even though businesses groups, including the ICC, have provided roadmaps for using digital signatures, that does not mean businesses wouldn't want to see international standards on the issue. They key is making sure those standards aren't hamstrung by overly specific technical requirements that could become obsolete within days, Fares said.
     "Business wants it on an international level," he said. "It's a huge priority."

Governments Could Provide Roadmap
     For this to happen, the market should lead and Hanns Glatz, issue manager for consumer confidence with the Global Business Dialogue, said 100 percent standardization isn't necessary. He's more interested in a uniform legal safety net for consumer protection guiding the use of electronic signatures. Glatz said the GBDE, which has been examining electronic signatures, is seeing standards develop commercially, particularly in the banking industry. Governments could step in and coordinate the thorny legal and jurisdictional issues that businesses can't solve, he said.
     "We would like to see during the first half of the next year a statement from major governments that would be a roadmap to an agreement," he said.
     This could come true in part when the European Union signs off on an electronic signatures directive that aims to harmonize recognition for electronic signatures between the EU's member states. Gerard de Graaf, first secretary for trade with the EU's Washington delegation, said the European Parliament will agree to the directive, which does not specify which technology has to be used in digital signature transactions.
     This was a major sticking point of the measure, which originally divided EU ministers and worried industry officials who didn't want the EU to endorse any specific technology. The ministers later reached agreement to create general requirements for electronic signatures without pinpointing a particular technology.
     While de Graaf said the EU's first priority is sparking e-commerce growth in Europe, he said an international standard for digital signatures is inevitable. It's just a matter of time.
     "The question is not whether there is going to be a global agreement on electronic signatures, the question is when," he said.
- by Caroline Broder