The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has issued a Regulation No 11 of 2014 for the licensing and approval of Trusted Third Parties (Certification Authorities) based on article 40 (b) of the Electronic Transaction Law No. 85 of 2001 (published in page 181 of the Official Gazette 5264/16-01–2014.
The regulation is compromised of 15 articles and came into effect on 16 January 2014. In article 2, the regulation species certain requirements for any business organization (also public) that want to apply to become qualified certified authority and these are:
1) To be a public or private joint stock company or a Limited Liability Company (LLC) established in accordance with the laws of Jordan;
2) To have a minimum capital of JD 50.000;
3) Not to have any criminal conviction, misdemeanor or be declared bankrupt by any of its main promoters, shareholders or members of its board of directors;
4) Satisfy all other administrative requirements as shall be specified in a directive to be issued by the Telecommunication Regulation Authority; and
5) Submit all required documents including the following:
A) A document explaining the practices of such business.
B) A document explaining technical specification for electronic authentication.
It would be interesting to know the reasons why the Jordanian government has decided to issue the implementation regulation in 2014. Many electronic transaction laws around the world were drafted during the 1990s and beginning of 2000 when IT experts believed that e-commerce will not flourish without Certification Authorities (CA). It was also suggested by many lawyers and government officials that consumers would be at risk when they engage in e-business activities if they do not use public key and private key encryption technologies. These predications and many others were inaccurate specially after the bust of e-commerce bubble in 2000. Nowadays, most consumers and internet users use simple technologies to authenticate their signatures and the integrity of their email and website communications. Furthermore, many e-commerce companies use impeded technologies such as Secure Socket Layers (SSL) to guarantee secure transactions over the internet without the need to refer to any third party.
E-commerce laws in the Arab region are similar and I am not sure if these laws have helped to boost e-commerce sales in the region. It is also interesting to note that there are no cases that were brought to test the application of those laws in practice. I believe that introducing laws and regulations is necessary for e-commerce to flourish, but we need to evaluate to what extent these laws have helped this sector and what are the requirements for an affective system particularly for the Arab countries. It will remain to be seen whether this implementation regulation would boost e-commerce sales in Jordan and the Middle East.
For more information about this implementation regulation, you can visit this page here http://www.lob.gov.jo/ui/bylaws/search_no.jsp?no=11&year=2014
