US government officials were somewhat surprised last Friday to discover that President Clinton electronically signed the joint US/Irish e-commerce communique with a digital signature technique which did indeed use encryption, or the encoding of data.

Back home the Americans have placed restrictions on the export sale of certain types of encryption products although no such restrictions are placed on the particular signature technology used.

The voiceover during the signing ceremony indicated that the signature was generated using "complex mathematics". But a rose is a rose is a rose. . .