Bill C-54 is not law yet, but it is well on its way to be so. Bill C-54 is available as amended from the Parlimentary web site. http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/1/parlbus/chambus/house/bills/government/C-54/C-54_2/C-54_cover-E.html Part 1 is the private sector privacy laws. Basicly these should satisfy the EU Data Privacy Law requirements. Part 2 is what I am interested in here. It is the "electronic documents" section. While legalise can make my eyes glaze over, what I get from this section is that the laws are not technology specific which is a good thing. Particulars of the technologies may be regulated by the Treasuary Board, as to what is a "secure electronic signature." Since Canada's Cryptography Policy does not include private sector key escrow with government, I believe we shouldn't expect this to be tied to recongition of a valid "secure electronic signature." The only thing that has raised my concerns was the presumption of integrity <http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/1/parlbus/chambus/house/bills/government/C-54/C-54_2/90052b-3E.html#24> 31.3 For the purposes of subsection 31.2(1), in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the integrity of an electronic documents system by or in which an electronic document is recorded or stored is proven (a) by evidence capable of supporting a finding that at all material times the computer system or other similar device used by the electronic documents system was operating properly or, if it was not, the fact of its not operating properly did not affect the integrity of the electronic document and there are no other reasonable grounds to doubt the integrity of the electronic documents system; (b) if it is established that the electronic document was recorded or stored by a party who is adverse in interest to the party seeking to introduce it; or (c) if it is established that the electronic document was recorded or stored in the usual and ordinary course of business by a person who is not a party and who did not record or store it under the control of the party seeking to introduce it. ------ This strikes me as having a large amount of faith. If an unauthorized user submits a document to the Queen's Printers for example, saying that Parliment passed and Royal Asset has been granted for the federal government to pay me one million dollars every year. If the computers involved appeared to be working "correctly," this would be considered law. Also "printouts" are assumed correct unless you can prove otherwise. So if I whip up a "log file" in Word Perfect, it's valid unless there is stronger evidence to contradict it. That's my non-legal look at C-54, and its "secure electronic signatures." -- M Taylor mctaylor@ / privacy.nb.ca
