news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_347000/347550.stm -> news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/347550.stm
The proposed legislation had been needlessly entangled with efforts to control computer crime, it said. The select committee chairman, Martin O'Neill, told a news conference it may now be a case of "an elephant giving birth to a mouse". The report received a mixed response from industry experts. Some welcomed the highlighting of "squandered opportunities", others thought the criticism "rather unfair". Government's encryption policy was scrambled Last autumn, Peter Mandelson, then Trade and Industry Secretary, promised legislation to make Britain the most conducive country in the world for electronic trade. On Wednesday, MPs said the whole rationale for such legislation was questionable. This stemmed from inadequate political control being exercised over the development and determination of cryptography policy, they said. At the heart of the proposed legislation was the controversial concept of "key escrow". This involves licensed bodies being set up to hold the keys which unlock data sent over the Net in a scrambled encoded form. If law enforcement agencies suspected a crime was being committed they could apply for the keys to the encrypted data. But industry and civil liberties groups successfully argued the move would destroy business confidence in conducting trade over the Internet through the UK as well as infringe on privacy rights of individuals. Key escrow now dropped "Now that key escrow has been dropped by the government, the committee believes that the rationale for an electronic commerce bill is open to question," the report states. At the top of our wish list is the simple statement that we want to be able to work in a UK that engenders trust and confidence in doing business electronically," he said. Andrew Boswell, Chief Technology Officer at ICL and chairman of the InterForum Lobby Group was less damning: "The report is very critical of the Government, but I think this is rather unfair. Without such a framework, the public will not have the protection of the law in their electronic transactions, and industry's huge investments in new e-commerce services will be built on insecure foundations," he said. Mr Boswell agreed, however, that the key escrow proposals should be abandoned and that e-commerce and e-crime needed to be dealt with separately. Yaman Akdeniz, director of Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties (UK) said: "We are glad that privacy issues are fully explored and considered by the Select Committee and the views of the civil liberties organisations are taken into account. In this section 26 World's smallest transistor 27 Scientists join forces to study Arctic ozone 28 Mathematicians crack big puzzle 29 The growing threat of internet fraud (From Business) 30 Who watches the pilots?
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