July 22, 1999 Update - Full Text of Law given Royal Assent on July 15, 1999, enacted into law as S.B.C. 1999 Chapter No. 35.
June 28, 1999 - PKI digital signatures used for electronic filing of real estate deeds and disbursement of sales proceeds and closing expenses in Province of British Columbia.  Bill introduced in Provincial Legislative Assembly 6/28/99.  Full text of Bill and Debate. Filed deeds continue to be stored in existing paper-based Torrens land title system.  Law Society of British Columbia is certification authority for its lawyer members doing the electronic conveyancing.  Courtesy of Ron Usher, Staff Lawyer for the Law Society of British Columbia, member of ABA Information Security Committee working on PKI Assessment Guidelines.

May 10, 1999 - The U.S. Department of Defense announced that it will implement PKI department-wide in the 2000-2002 timeframe, to enhance security and eliminate paperwork.  The DOD will operate its own CA for internal communications, but will use external CAs to ensure secure interoperability between the DOD and its vendors and contractors, ". . . operating under a process that delivers the level of assurance that is required to meet business and legal requirements."  By June 2000 DOD webservers that are not publicly accessible will need to have at least Class 3 (formerly known as medium level) assurance level, and will use these certificates for authentication of server only via SSL; by October 2001 all private DOD and DOD-interest web server will require bi-directional authentication of both client and server using Class 3 user certificates.  The DOD PKI contemplates internal functions relating to command and weapon control evolving to Class 4 certificates (smart-card token-based) by June 2000, and all certificates by January 2002.  The PKI also defines the requirements of a Class 5 certificates intended for the sending of classified information over unencrypted networks.  Can someone help locate the URL of the full text of the announcement.  Above is summarized from Jeremy Singer, "New PKI Policy Will Have Dramatic Impact on Military, Business Affairs," Inside the Army, May 10, 1999, courtesy of Dave Sweigert of BBN/GTE Internetworking, who runs the website www.pkinfo.com

Jan 4, 1999 - U. S. General Services Administration ACES Request for Proposal, using PKI to authenticate both the RFP and responding proposals.

Sep 4, 1998 - In Ireland, President Clinton and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern use smart cards to digitally sign a digital joint communique on electronic commerce.
It is interesting to note that the digital document was merely signed, and not also encrypted for confidentiality, perhaps to avoid calling attention to restrictive encryption export policies in the U.S. (and in UK and France), but which are more relaxed in Ireland. See the article in Wired News, forwarded by Ruven Schwartz of WestGroup.   John Muller of the S.F. office Brobeck Phleger & Harrison LLP observed on a listserv that the video of the signing ceremony portrays the souvenir exchange of smart cards by Clinton at the end of the ceremony, demonstrating that "the politicians have not absorbed the warnings about the importance of safeguarding your private key."  I call it an act of private key compromise in flagrante delicto. . . .