The e-commerce industry needed, and requested, a clarification of the applicability of existing law along with international agreement on electronic contracts. However governments have yielded to their natural instinct for all-encompassing law. The time saved on debating these unnecessary sections could be better spent on international negotiations to ensure that compatible legal frameworks exist in the countries with which we trade. Chris Sundt of the CBI observed that the current bill reflected its history. Thus two departments are involved in a single bill and their perception of the issues seems to differ.
Business seeks only a stable, predictable environment in which to develop electronic commerce.
Section 1 of the draft bill creates uncertainty, since any system of self-regulation will always suffer from the threat of government intervention. Section 3 does not seem to recognise the current situation of widely available, strong, asymmetric cryptography, and by following old models could place huge burdens on the processes and technology used by business. In particular the convention requires that an accused person must be considered innocent until he is proven guilty, and prohibits the of evidence against a person which that person has been compelled to reveal. However section 12.1 of the e-communications bill makes it an offence not to provide a comprehensible copy of encrypted information, and there is no restriction on the use to which the decrypted information may then be put. This may be contrasted with the operation of the Serious Fraud Office, which has the right to compel a witness to reveal information, but disqualifies such information being used in evidence against the person who revealed it.