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Date: Fri, 27 Jul 2001 19:11:27 +0200
From: Pawel Krawczyk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Polish digital signature and freedom of information law

DIGIAL SIGNATURE

Polish Parliament has adopted digital signature law on July 4. The new
act will be then passed to Senate and signed by the President and is
expected to start working after 6 months vacation legis, in the first
quarter of 2002. The act is quite compatible with EU law and similiar
as for the regulations introduced.

The act can be found at http://ks.sejm.gov.pl:8009/proc3/opisy/2594.htm
Comments on http://ipsec.pl/podpis/ (both in Polish only, sorry)

FOOIA

At the same time the Parliament has adopted new act on citizens' access
to the public information, similiar to US Freedom of Information Act.
According to the act, all information, documents and official meetings
performed by governmental institutions is available to anyone on
request. The institutions are also obligated to publish the information
on special Internet site to be available to the people. This regulations
is however delayed in execution for 1-3 years to allow necessary changes
in the offices and institutions.

The latter is especially useful as a method to control corruption and
stupid decisions made for someone's profit, which is a common practice now
in Polish offices. For example, information on some public contracts or
grants may be only available to a group of people, or even hidden. Recent
scandal included the now freed Minister of Telecommunications, who was
responsible for a placing a secret clause in the privatisation contract
of Polish Telecom. The clause actually guaranteed the company monopoly
on the market. And this was probably only the top of the iceberg.

The act is available at http://orka.sejm.gov.pl/Rejestrd.nsf/wgdruku/3112

-- 
Paweł Krawczyk *** home: <http://ceti.pl/~kravietz/>
security: <http://ipsec.pl/>  *** fidonet: 2:486/23




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