11/19/99 Newsbytes (Pg. Unavail. Online)
1999 WL 29943241
Newsbytes News Network
(c) Copyright 1999 Post-Newsweek Business Information, Inc. All rights
reserved.
Friday, November 19, 1999
Digital Signatures Bill Clears The Senate
Robert MacMillan, Newsbytes
WASHINGTON, DC, U.S.A., 1999 NOV 19 (NB). Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., is
no longer crying over spilled milk. Now that he has lifted his hold on
other Senate legislation that resulted from dissatisfaction over dairy
provisions in the omnibus budget bill, he has allowed the digital
signatures bill, the Millennium Digital Commerce Act, to pass.
The Millennium Digital Commerce Act, S. 761, is one of several pieces
of tech legislation that already has passed through the Senate Friday
afternoon, or is waiting for a vote.
Kohl previously had put a hold on almost all legislation in the Senate
in an attempt to get some dairy-related provisions in the budget bill
changed, but once he lifted the hold, a Senate staffer said, legislation
that was waiting in line began to soar through.
The digital signatures bill already had been stalled once over other
concerns raised by Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn.
The digital signature legislation that passed the Senate by "unanimous
consent" today is the result of a compromise on language between the
bill's sponsor, Sen. Spencer Abraham, R-Mich., and Judiciary Committee
Ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
The bill in its compromise form establishes federal approval for
digital signatures to be considered as legally binding as their paper
counterparts.
Language that passed in the House version of the bill, known as
E-SIGN, includes that provision, as well as more rulemaking that
essentially forces states to accept the federal guidelines for electronic record-keeping and what sorts of legal documents still must
be made available in paper format.
A group of House Democrats, led by Minority Leader Richard Gephardt,
D-Mo., Commerce Committee Ranking Democrat John Dingell, D-Mich., and
Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat John Conyers, D-Mich., offered the
Leahy-Abraham bill as an alternative to E-SIGN, saying that the E-SIGN
bill represented a bulldozer running over individual states' interests
on how electronic signatures are used.
The Democrats also argued that E-SIGN risks a certain veto from the
White House because it is weak on consumer protection.
The bill overwhelmingly passed the House, however, especially with the
aid of technology-minded members of the New Democrat Coalition of
Congress members.
The House and Senate digital signatures bills now must be ironed out
in a conference committee session, though it is unclear whether this
will happen before Congress adjourns at the end of this week.
Reported by Newsbytes.com, newsbytes.com .
16:20 CST Reposted 16:20 CST
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