WASHINGTON, October 9, 1998 — The Senate passed Congress' first major piece of legislation on electronic signatures this Thursday, approving Senator Spencer Abraham's "Paperwork Reduction Act" as part of the larger "Internet Tax Freedom Act" (ITFA) (S.442). The Abraham bill would push the federal government into the Information Age, laying down the preliminary groundrules for federal government use of electronic signatures for forms submitted online. The bill also contains first-ever privacy provisions to protect the personal information of people using electronic signature system.

"Electronic signatures will ultimately be an essential part of doing business online," said Alan Davidson, CDT Staff Counsel. "This bill moves us closer to the vision of a government made more accessible to the citizenry via the Internet, while protecting the privacy rights of people who use these new technologies. CDT commends Senator Abraham for including forward-looking privacy provisions in this bill, recognizing that people will only trust electronic government if their privacy is protected."

The Abraham legislation establishes a baseline for government acceptance of electronic signatures, without being overly restrictive of the technologies used. The bill requires the OMB to set out procedures for agency acceptance of electronic submissions using electronic signatures, and agencies will be required to accept those electronic submissions except where found to be impractical or inappropriate. Similar legislation has been sponsored in the House by Representatives Anna Eshoo and Billy Tauzin.

The legislation also establishes, for the first time, privacy protections governing personal information collected when the public uses electronic signature systems. Many such systems gather sensitive information in the course of providing and guaranteeing and electronic signature. The Abraham bill would prohibit companies that collect such information from using or disclosing it without the permission of the person involved. Authored by Senators Leahy and Abraham, this marks the first attempt to craft a legislative approach to dealing with the potential erosion of privacy created by electronic signature use.

More background on the issue of electronic signatures online is available at CDT's web site, http://www.cdt.org/digsig