The Electronic Communications Act 2000 (c.7) is an
Act of the
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...
that:
*Had provisions to regulate the provision of
cryptographic
Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adve ...
services in the UK (ss.1-6); and
*Confirms the legal status of
electronic signature
An electronic signature, or e-signature, is data that is logically associated with other data and which is used by the signatory to sign the associated data. This type of signature has the same legal standing as a handwritten signature as long as i ...
s (ss.7-10).
The United Kingdom government had come to the conclusion that encryption, encryption services and electronic signatures would be important to
e-commerce
E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...
in the UK.
By 1999, however, only the security services still hankered after key escrow. So a "
sunset clause
In public policy, a sunset provision or sunset clause is a measure within a statute, regulation or other law that provides that the law shall cease to have effect after a specific date, unless further legislative action is taken to extend the law ...
" was put in the bill. The Electronic Communications Act 2000 gave the
Home Office the power to create a registration regime for encryption services. This was given a five-year period before it would automatically lapse, which eventually happened in May 2006.
References
External links
An account from the Foundation For Information Policy Research*
United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 2000
Cryptography law
{{UK-statute-stub