Date: Tue, 06 Jun 95 07:07:06 EST Errors-To: Comp-privacy Error Handler From: Computer Privacy Digest Moderator To: Comp-privacy@uwm.edu Subject: Computer Privacy Digest V6#051 Computer Privacy Digest Tue, 06 Jun 95 Volume 6 : Issue: 051 Today's Topics: Moderator: Leonard P. Levine Opt Out of New Phone Service Re: Sending VISA Card Details by e-Mail Re: Sending VISA Card Details by e-Mail Re: Sending VISA Card Details by e-Mail Re: CIBC and Royal Bank to do MONDEX Pilot Re: Text Filter for the Very Good A Little Peek inside FinCEN Re: The Microsoft Win95 Virus - update Mistaken Identity & Natl Smart ID Re: Credit Cards in Grocery Stores Excerpts from TNO 2(5) Exon Bill Petition Internet Regulations Defying Pitfalls of a Cashless Society Info on CPD [unchanged since 12/29/94] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: danpatents@aol.com (DanPatents) Date: 02 Jun 1995 22:25:16 -0400 Subject: Opt Out of New Phone Service Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) A new issue of privacy and computers has arisen. Recently, I received the following notice on the second to last page of my local telephone bill. I'll rewrite it all here. You may have this same service sooner or latter from your own local phone company. You may want to take advantage of the opt out option. What do you think about the following? (Quoting now from a local telephone service bill where XXXXX is the name of the telephone company): *For Your Information* May 17, 1995 IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT A NEW XXXXX SERVICE On July 1, 1995, XXXXX will introduce a new automated customer name and address service. This dial-in service will provide the capability of matching published telephone numbers with their corresponding names and addresses, as they appear in the telephone directory. *If you do not want your information included in this service, you may call 1-800-xxx-xxxx, operator xxxx, until June 30, 1995, and request that your information be excluded from this service. After June 30, 1995, please contact our Business Office.* The number is listed in the Customer Guide section of your local XXXXX directory. ------------------------------ From: "Mark W. Eichin" Date: 02 Jun 95 22:55:25 -0400 Subject: Re: Sending VISA Card Details by e-Mail "American banks refuse to let mail-order companies check the address of the card's owner". So, if I know the number of a USA-issued card I can I recently ordered a laptop, and was told that they would only ship it to an address that the credit card company listed (inconvenient as it meant I had to pick it up at my box instead of having it shipped to my office.) They said that it was possible to call the Credit Card company and inform them of additional valid shipping addresses, though I didn't try that. ------------------------------ From: sean@sdg.dra.com (Sean Donelan) Date: 03 Jun 95 15:34:12 CST Subject: Re: Sending VISA Card Details by e-Mail Organization: Data Research Associates, St. Louis MO NRA@maxwell.ph.kcl.ac.uk writes: Firstly, it's worth repeating the quote from Barclay's bank: "... but we would make it clear that for someone to send their credit card number unencrypted across the Internet breaks their agreement with the bank that issued the card." That's pretty clear: DON'T DO IT! (or you may indeed wind up footing the bill when a hacker grabs your number). Berclay's bank must have some different language in their cardholder agreement than most US banks do. US bank card holder agreements say nothing about the Internet, or encryption. Of course, US law tends to put the bulk of the risk on the card issuer, not the card holder. The US credit card associations rules and regulations further allocate much of the risk to the merchant acquirier. Of course, we're now back to the age old questions. How much risk really exists. According to the credit card industry the biggest source of credit card fraud remains lost/stolen/never received credit cards. My opinion whether the Internet is really more or less secure than a TYMNET PAD with XRAY is debatable. During the 1980's TYMNET was the largest credit card network processor in the world with essentially no encryption. If Barclay's Bank really wants to play the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD) game, I suggest they need to be more careful. Skeletons exist in many banks' closets. Third, there seems to be a divide between USA and non-USA which means that USA customers fare worst. In the UK, a retailer must confirm that the address to which he ships gods* is the same as the address of the credit card owner (or risk not being paid for a fraudulent order). "American banks refuse to let mail-order companies check the address of the card's owner". So, if I know the number of a USA-issued card I can use it to order stuff to be delivered to any address I choose, like a few grand's worth of SIMMS to an accomodation address! There are at least 10 major credit card processing networks in the US just for MC/VISA. They each work slightly differently. But I know that VISANET, BANKNET (MC), and FDR have an Address Verfication Service (AVS). Maybe only Mail Order / Telephone Order merchants (i.e. higher charges) can use the service though? So not all merchants bother, but since the MO/TO merchant usually loses any dispute with the bank, some merchants just view it as the cost of doing business. -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation ------------------------------ From: yorick@msen.com (Steve Arlow) Date: 05 Jun 1995 00:19:50 -0400 Subject: Re: Sending VISA Card Details by e-Mail Organization: Msen, Inc. -- Ann Arbor, MI Kelly Bert Manning wrote: Point of sale debit card machines have become common in the past few years in my province. I've yet to see a privacy shield around one of these. [...] Interesting. Here in the USA, the point-of-purchase debit card readers (the ones that I've seen) have small privacy sheilds around them, but they all give audio feedback (beep!) with each number pressed. This defeats the protection of the sheild, because anyone watching your hand can pick up the number by listening for the beeps, even if they can't see your fingers. PIN entry is one of the few cases where you *don't* want audible feedback, just tactile (and maybe visual if the display is private enough). But it seems that the companies who are building these systems haven't really given it much thought. As for teller machines, I was once stung by an ATMs which, without warning, displayed my full name and the current balance of my account on a large CRT. I'd like to get my hands around the neck of the fellow who programmed that one! -- "Shiba no to ni | Steve Arlow, Yorick Software Inc. | (810) 473-0920 cha o konoha kaku | 39336 Polo Club Dr. #103, arashi kana" _ | Farmington Hills, MI 48335-5634 -- Matsuo Basho | http://www.msen.com/~yorick | mailto:yorick@msen.com ------------------------------ From: bo774@freenet.carleton.ca (Kelly Bert Manning) Date: 03 Jun 1995 07:34:45 GMT Subject: Re: CIBC and Royal Bank to do MONDEX Pilot Organization: The National Capital FreeNet, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Christian Reiser (Christian.Reiser@aut.alcatel.at) writes: Don't get impressed by the anonymity you seem to have. All these cards [...] Did the pronoun get confused in translation? I don't have one of these and don't plan to. I do have a bank ATM card that I use for the majority of my cash withdrawals and bankbook updates, but I've never had a credit card account, or any kind of charge account, and don't want or need one. have a serial number and as soon as this number once gets connected to [...] The (US) national academy of sciences report on automated databanks from the early 70s devoted some time to debunking popular press reports about use of credit cards leaving electronic footprints. Twenty years ago this was probably a reasonable position to take. With cheap micro and parallel processors today this kind of "data mining" has come of age and is much more practical than when computers and storage were expensive and rare. some personal data, every newspaper you pay with this card can be tracked down. In Austria such a system should be installed beginning next year, but I am afraid of security and safety aspects. The Company, which introduces these cards here, does not tell you anything about the means they use. And if their security depends on obscurity, I do not want to use this system. I don't want to use it even if has excellent security. Well, there might turn out to be a secondary/resale market for these, ie. people who don't care buy them and put some amount of money in them, then resell them to parties unknown to use in transactions being done by phone. Personally when I seem someone using plastic to pay for something I usually think, "they can't afford to pay cash". For truly anonymous transactions by mail I use a bank money order. One of the reasons I switched from a credit union to a bank is that the credit union wanted to see my member card and fill in the name for me whenever I bought a money order. They also couldn't understand why I was upset when an ATM programming error gave me the TRX receipt for the last person to use the ATM before me and left my receipt in the machine to spit out for the next person, after all "most people leave their receipts in the garbage". Time to find another financial institution. ------------------------------ From: rj.mills@pti-us.com (Dick Mills) Date: 03 Jun 1995 11:37:55 -0400 Subject: Re: Text Filter for the Very Good ramole@aol.com (RAMole), in CPD 6,50 wrote: It should be possible to write software to filter any incoming text stream and blank out the horrible awful dirty words just as newspapers do, e.g. "Senator Exon is an *******!" Anyone else have some ideas on this? My first thought was "What about pictures?". My second was, "What's dirty?" The net is more anarchistic than a newspaper. I presume you've heard of anonymous cancelbots. If the filter you propose was available, nearly everybody would be able to censor everyone else. Conservatives would filter liberals and visa versa until we were left with thundering silence. My third thought is, "Hey, microprocessors are ubiquitous. Why not build the filter directly into printing presses, broadcast antennas, and telephone handsets? Better yet. They have noise cancelling headsets now. I could put a filter in my headset and never again be bothered by things I don't like hearing. The ++ version would substitue things I do want to hear." Your idea has lots of potential Ramole. :) =================================================== Dick Mills rj.mills@pti-us.com Power Technologies, Inc. phone +1(518)395-5154 P.O. Box 1058 fax +1(518)346-2777 Schenectady, NY 12301-1058 ------------------------------ From: glr@ripco.com (Glen Roberts) Date: 04 Jun 1995 21:50:20 GMT Subject: A Little Peek inside FinCEN Organization: Ripco Internet BBS, Chicago FinCEN has recently developed a computer system designed to identify suspicious transactions based on the computer reviewing and correlating the BSA reports discussed earlier. The FinCEN Artificial Intelligence Targeting System has been operational since March 1993. However, as of September 1993, FinCEN was still modifying and enhancing the system. The system uses a number of rules or conditions to screen, evaluate, and group the reports filed after January 1, 1993. Each week, identifying information from the BSA reports (except for the Foreign Bank Account Reports) are loaded into the computer and linked with other filings related to the same subjects -- individuals, businesses, or accounts. The system is designed to periodically produce listings of subjects that meet certain predetermined thresholds of activity or transaction amounts that are considered outside the norm. Lists of potential targets can also be produced by querying the system to identify subjects that meet certain characteristics. The lists produced by the system by analysts to week out those subjects that are legitimate and develop additional information on those that remain. The resulting list is then sent to the appropriate law enforcement agency or agencies for consideration. As of August 5, 1993, FinCEN had sent out a total of 13 lists to 1 or more of 5 federal law enforcement agencies that contained a total of 216 targets. Five of the lists were compiled at the request of law enforcement agencies. -- -------------------------------------- Glen L. Roberts, Editor, Full Disclosure Host Full Disclosure Live (WWCR 5065 khz - Sundays 8pm eastern) (WOYL AM-1340, Oil City, PA) http://pages.ripco.com:8080/~glr/glr.html (web page includes information on system to defeat Caller-ID/ANI) ------------------------------------- ------------------------------ From: Dean Ridgway Date: 04 Jun 1995 15:53:36 -0700 Subject: Re: The Microsoft Win95 Virus - update An update on this. A friend of mine got hold of a copy of the beta test CD of Win95, and set up a packet sniffer between his serial port and the modem. When you try out the free demo time on The Microsoft Network, it transmits your entire directory structure in background. This means that they have a list of every directory (and, potentially every file) on your machine. It would not be difficult to have something like a FileRequest from your system to theirs, without you knowing about it. This way they could get ahold of any juicy routines you've written yourself and claim them as their own if you don't have them copyrighted. Needless to say, I'm rather annoyed about this. Isn't this the same sort of thing that got Prodigy in trouble a year or so ago? I remember reading about some class action lawsuits in California when some lawyers found Prodigy reading confidential lawyer/client info off their harddrives. I never heard how any of the lawsuits turned out though. /\-/\ Dean Ridgway | Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- ( - - ) InterNet ridgwad@peak.org | I took the one less traveled by, =\_v_/= FidoNet 1:357/1.103 | And that has made all the difference. CIS 73225,512 | "The Road Not Taken" - Robert Frost. http://www.peak.org/~ridgwad/ PGP mail encouraged, finger for key: 28C577F3 2A5655AFD792B0FB 9BA31E6AB4683126 ------------------------------ From: "Mich Kabay [NCSA Sys_Op]" <75300.3232@compuserve.com> Date: 05 Jun 95 09:41:05 EDT Subject: Mistaken Identity & Natl Smart ID Taken from the Washington Post news wire via CompuServe's Executive News Service: WP 06/04 COURTLAND MILLOY Innocently Named, Wrongly Tagged By COURTLAND MILLOY Pat and James Harris are used to being mistaken for other people. When Patricia Roberts Harris ran for mayor of Washington in 1982, Pat Harris would get telephone calls at home requesting interviews. The same thing happened to her husband in 1974, when James Harris became the first black quarterback to be a regular starter in the National Football League. They thought that was kind of cute. But what's happening to their son is not. Brian Anthony Harris keeps getting mistaken for people who commit crimes. Key points from the story: o Ralph McLean is thought "to have shot and wounded two uniformed D.C. police officers in January and then shot and killed FBI agent William H. Christian Jr. before killing himself Monday [95.05.29]. One of his aliases was "Anthony Harris." o Brian Anthony Harris was erroneously shadowed for two weeks until McLean died. o He was served with a summons for an unpaid hospital bill racked up by another Brian Harris. o He was erroneously accused by the FBI of fraud involving travellers' cheques. o He has been stopped by police in the Washington area 20 times since 1990 because they are trying to arrest the "other" Brian Harris. An FBI agent has now agreed to write letters for him and make phone calls in emergencies to help him out. [Comments from MK: Mr Harris would benefit from a recognized, cryptographically sound smart ID card recognized instantly by law enforcement authorities. With the growing use of fraudulent credit cards and other identifiers linking a pseudonym to a crime, the number of innocent victims will also grow. A national, non-counterfeitable ID card's value to individuals choosing to use it does not mean that everyone should be required to carry a national ID. However, for those who would like to be able to prove their identity instantly, such a card would be very useful.] -- M.E.Kabay,Ph.D. / Dir. Education, Natl Computer Security Assn (Carlisle, PA) ------------------------------ From: markm@xetron.com (Mark Malson) Date: 05 Jun 1995 22:22:54 GMT Subject: Re: Credit Cards in Grocery Stores Organization: Xetron Corporation wmcclatc@internext.com (Bill McClatchie) wrote: I have seen something new added to my credit cards slips when purching goods at a couple of Washington DC area grocers. They are adding the card holders name to the slips. Wouldn't this make it easier for someone to pick up one of these slips (which many peole just toss in the trash) and use them? I save all this stuff up in a folder for a month or so, and then go out back with my big coffee can and a pack of matches and burn stuff like this. ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 05 Jun 1995 19:10:42 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Excerpts from TNO 2(5) Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee From: Geoff Pike Date: 05 Jun 1995 14:10:52 -0700 To: net.cool@ginsberg.CS.Berkeley.EDU Subject: excerpts from TNO 2(5) from Phil Agre's The Network Observer, May '95. The 5/28/95 New York Times carries an article about a high school student, Paul Kim, who published a parody "home page" for his school on the WorldWide Web. When the school principal found it, "without Mr. Kim's knowledge, [she] faxed letters to seven universities to which he had applied, including Harvard, Stanford and Columbia, informing them that she was withdrawing the school's endorsement of his National Merit Scholarship and any recommendations that high school administrators might have given him." No due process, nothing. Mr. Kim only learned about this when someone at the Columbia University admissions office called him to ask what was going on. ------------------------------ From: Robert Gellman Date: 04 Jun 1995 22:14:34 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Exon Bill Petition CAMPAIGN TO STOP THE EXON/GORTON COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT Update: -Bill is on the Senate floor -Please act to help Leahy stop the Exon censorship bill PEITION TO HELP SENATOR LEAHY STOP THE UNCONSTITUTIONAL COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT May 19, 1995 PLEASE WIDELY REDISTRIBUTE THIS DOCUMENT WITH THIS BANNER INTACT REDISTRIBUTE ONLY UNTIL June 9, 1995 REPRODUCE THIS ALERT ONLY IN RELEVANT FORUMS Distributed by the Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw@vtw.org) HELP SENATOR LEAHY STOP THE EXON COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT The Senate is expected to on vote the Communications Decency Act (CDA, a.k.a. the Exon Bill) within the next three weeks. The Communications Decency Act, in its current form, would severely restrict your rights to freedom of speech and freedom of expression online, and represents a grave threat to the very nature and existence of the Internet as we know it today. Without your help now, the Communications Decency Act will likely pass and the net may never be the same again. Although the CDA has been revised to limit the liability of online service providers, it would still criminalize the transmission of any content deemed "obscene, lewd, lacivious, filthy, or indecent," including the private communications between consenting adults. Even worse, some conservative pro-censorship groups are working to amend the CDA to make it even more restrictive. Currently, Senator Exon is negotiating with pro-censorship groups and commercial entities that would be affected by the CDA. The voices of Internet users must be heard now. We need to demonstrate that we are a political force to be reckoned with. In an effort to preserve your rights in cyberspace, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has introduced the only legislative alternative to the Communications Decency Act. Senator Leahy is willing to offer his bill as a substitute for the CDA, but needs your support behind his efforts. Senator Leahy's legislation would commission a study to examine the complex issues involved in protecting children from controversial content while preserving the First Amendment, the privacy rights of users, and the free flow of information in cyberspace. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WHAT CAN I DO? Please Sign the petition in support of Senator Leahy's alternative. There are two ways to sign: 1. World Wide Web: URL:http://www.cdt.org/petition.html Please follow all instructions carefully. Please also put a link to this page on your homepage. 2. email: send email to petition@cdt.org. Please provide the following information EXACTLY AS SHOWN. INCORRECT SUBMISSIONS CANNOT NOT BE COUNTED! Be sure that you make a carriage return at the end of each line Your Name Your email address Are you a US Citizen (yes or no) (** IF NO, skip to last line) Your Street Address (** USE ONLY ONE LINE) Your City Your State Your Zip Code (**VERY IMPORTANT) Country PRIVACY POLICY: Information collected during this campaign will not be used for any purpose other than delivering a list of signers to Congress and compiling counts of signers from particular states and Congressional districts. It will not be reused, sold, rented, loaned, or available for use for any other purpose. All records will be destroyed immediately upon completion of this project. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE PETITION STATEMENT We the undersigned users of the Internet are strongly opposed to the "Communications Decency Act" (Title IV of S. 652), which is currently pending before the Senate. This legislation will severely restrict our rights to freedom of speech and privacy guaranteed under the constitution. Based on our Nation's longstanding history of protecting freedom of speech, we believe that the Federal Government should have no role in regulating the content of constitutionally protected speech on the Internet. We urge the Senate to halt consideration of the Communications Decency Act and consider in its place S. 714, the "Child Protection, User Empowerment, and Free Expression In Interactive Media Study Bill", an alternative approach offered by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Signed: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ For More information on the Communications Decency Act issue: Web Sites URL:http://www.cdt.org/cda.html URL:http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/ URL:http://www.panix.com/vtw/exon/ FTP Archives URL:ftp://ftp.cdt.org/pub/cdt/policy/freespeech/00-INDEX.FREESPEECH URL:ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/Alerts/ Gopher Archives: URL:gopher://gopher.eff.org/11/Alerts URL:gopher://gopher.panix.com/11/vtw/exon Information By auto-reply email: If you don't have www/ftp/gopher access, you can get up-to-date information from the following autobots: General information on the CDA issue cda-info@cdt.org Current status of the CDA issue cda-stat@cdt.org Chronology of events of the CDA issue vtw@vtw.org with the ------------------------------ From: marlolas@mango.aloha.com Date: 06 Jun 1995 09:18:27 GMT Subject: Internet Regulations Organization: FlexNet Inc, HAWAII Hello, my name is Marlo, and I am a student at Hawaii Pacific University working on my professional paper for my Masters of Science in Information Systems degree. I would appreciate it if you would complete the attached survey and send any additional comments or information you may have regarding the regulation of the internet. Thank you. Answer the following questions by placing an "X" next to the correct response or filling in the appropriate response in the space provided. 1. What is your age group? _____ a. 5-18 _____ b. 19-25 _____ c. 26-30 _____ d. 31-40 _____ e. 41-50 _____ f. 51-60 _____ g. 61-70 _____ h. over 70 2. What is your education level? _____ a. Less than high school _____ b. High school _____ c. Trade School _____ d Associates _____ e. Bachelors _____ f. Masters _____ g. Doctor/Ph.D. 3. What is your occupational area? _____ a. Clerical/Secretarial _____ b. Administration _____ c. Supervisory/Management _____ d. Senior/Executive Management _____ e. Scientific Research or Educational _____ f. other _____________________ 4. What is your gender _____ a. Male _____ b. Female 5. What do you primarily use the Internet for? _____ a. Business _____ b. Personal _____ c. Scientific/Educational _____ d. System Admin./Mgmt. _____ e. Governmental _____ f. other _____________________ 6. Do you feel that the Internet has adequate security measures? _____ a. Yes _____ b. No 7. If the Internet is insecure, what would make it more secure? _____ a. increased hardware/software security measures _____ b. laws and regulations _____ c. a group or agency to monitor the Internet _____ d. a, b and c _____ e. other ______________________ 8. How many violations have you encountered or know of on the Internet within a year's time? _____ a. 1-5 _____ b. 6-10 _____ c. 11-15 _____ d. 16-20 _____ e. 21-25 _____ f. more than 25, amount _______ 9. What type of violation or violations have you encountered or know of? _____ a. Privacy _____ b. Libel _____ c. Piracy _____ d. Electronic Theft _____ e. Pornography _____ f. Other _____________________ 9. Rank the order of importance for a given law or regulation in each of the areas from 1 for most important to 6 for least important: _____ Privacy _____ Libel _____ Piracy _____ Electronic Theft _____ Pornography _____ Other __________________ 10. Who should be responsible for controlling access to the Internet? _____ a. Schools _____ b. Parents _____ c. Access Provider _____ d. The Government _____ e. Access Receiver _____ f. Other __________________ 11. Who should be responsible for security of the Internet? _____ a. The Internet System Administration _____ b. The Computer Industry _____ c. The Government _____ d. a, b and c _____ e. other _____________________ 12. What type of punishment should be established for violators? _____ a. Fines _____ b. imprisonment _____ c. denial of Internet access _____ d. a, b and c _____ e. other ______________________ ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 02 Jun 1995 20:02:39 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Defying Pitfalls of a Cashless Society Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Taken from the RISKS-LIST: Risks-Forum Digest Weds 28 May 1995 Volume 17 : Issue 15 FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks) ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator From: Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk (Brian Randell) Date: 30 May 1995 16:55:55 +0100 Subject: Defying pitfalls of a cashless society Defying pitfalls of a cashless society Victor Keegan (The Guardian, Economics Notebook, 30 May 1995) The kingdom of cash is starting to be attacked in a pincer movement: from in front, by electronic, or digital, cash, and from behind, by the growing popularity of the barter system Letts - artificial local currencies (rather like a baby-sitting points system), which people use instead of real money to pay each other for services rendered. [...] The world's central banks -- including the Bank of England -- are beginning to wake up to the fact that digital money could pose a threat to their hegemony. This is particularly true of the so-called "electronic purses" (like Mondex, which Midland Bank and others are pioneering) and, much more so, the digital (and untraceable) cash being-pioneered by DigiCash, the Amsterdam-based company. [...] As long as these are issued by banks-like Midland's Mondex-then it is nothing more than another bank deposit, albeit in electronic form. [...] Central banks have been sufficiently worried about the provision of electronic purses getting into the wrong hands to set up a working group of the European Monetary Institute. The conclusion was predictable: they are all right-so long as they are restricted to approved credit institutions (that is, banks), so that they can be properly monitored. Enter DigiCash, whose founder, the proselytising David Chaum, wants to create a digital system which could assume a life of its own. He has even patented a process whereby a bank or a company could validate a secret number which could be used as a unit of currency even though the issuing authority could not trace it. The place just waiting for such anonymous digital money (which would also be rather useful for kidnappers and launderers of drug money) is the Internet, the worldwide electronic cobweb of computer data bases. [...] Should the Net be provided with its own currency, it would suddenly become not only a global market place, but a virtual economy as well. It could become the first economy without a government or even a central bank at the centre. But if there is no government, no one will pay taxes. [...] We are not talking science fiction. Mr Chaum has already distributed a million digitised dollars to 5,000 pioneers taking part in a trial. Their Cybercash can be spent purchasing goods and services from 50 companies taking part in the trial. At the other end of the scale, the growth of Lett schemes is not yet a problem, if only because most of the schemes are small-scale and the people involved are probably earning below the threshold at which they would be required to pay tax. In a typical scheme one member might help another build a wall, thereby earning himself currency points, to be exchanged for work by someone else or for buying goods. If such a scheme went nationwide and electronic (so that the participants carried their points on a micro-chip on a plastic card), this could quickly evolve into electronic money effectively outside the control of the banking system and on which the participants would be reluctant to pay tax. The transactions might even take place through the Internet. Of course, central banks will move quickly if they feel their supervisory role and their divine right to print money is being challenged. The point is that the financial world is moving into uncharted waters. The change could be as far-reaching as the transition from metals to money in the last century. [What I found interesting was the way this article tied together (hi-tech) developments related to digital cash and the rise in popularity, at least here in the UK, of (typically low-tech) barter schemes. BR] Dept. of Computing Science, University of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK Brian.Randell@newcastle.ac.uk +44 191 222 7923 ------------------------------ From: "Prof. L. P. Levine" Date: 29 Dec 1994 10:50:22 -0600 (CST) Subject: Info on CPD [unchanged since 12/29/94] Organization: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee The Computer Privacy Digest is a forum for discussion on the effect of technology on privacy or vice versa. The digest is moderated and gatewayed into the USENET newsgroup comp.society.privacy (Moderated). Submissions should be sent to comp-privacy@uwm.edu and administrative requests to comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu. This digest is a forum with information contributed via Internet eMail. Those who understand the technology also understand the ease of forgery in this very free medium. Statements, therefore, should be taken with a grain of salt and it should be clear that the actual contributor might not be the person whose email address is posted at the top. Any user who openly wishes to post anonymously should inform the moderator at the beginning of the posting. He will comply. If you read this from the comp.society.privacy newsgroup and wish to contribute a message, you should simply post your contribution. As a moderated newsgroup, attempts to post to the group are normally turned into eMail to the submission address below. On the other hand, if you read the digest eMailed to you, you generally need only use the Reply feature of your mailer to contribute. If you do so, it is best to modify the "Subject:" line of your mailing. Contributions to CPD should be submitted, with appropriate, substantive SUBJECT: line, otherwise they may be ignored. They must be relevant, sound, in good taste, objective, cogent, coherent, concise, and nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome, but not personal attacks. Do not include entire previous messages in responses to them. Include your name & legitimate Internet FROM: address, especially from .UUCP and .BITNET folks. Anonymized mail is not accepted. All contributions considered as personal comments; usual disclaimers apply. All reuses of CPD material should respect stated copyright notices, and should cite the sources explicitly; as a courtesy; publications using CPD material should obtain permission from the contributors. Contributions generally are acknowledged within 24 hours of submission. If selected, they are printed within two or three days. The moderator reserves the right to delete extraneous quoted material. He may change the SUBJECT: line of an article in order to make it easier for the reader to follow a discussion. He will not, however, alter or edit or append to the text except for purely technical reasons. A library of back issues is available on ftp.cs.uwm.edu [129.89.9.18]. Login as "ftp" with password identifying yourid@yoursite. The archives are in the directory "pub/comp-privacy". People with gopher capability can most easily access the library at gopher.cs.uwm.edu. Mosaic users will find it at gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu. Older archives are also held at ftp.pica.army.mil [129.139.160.133]. ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- Leonard P. Levine | Moderator of: Computer Privacy Digest Professor of Computer Science | and comp.society.privacy University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee | Post: comp-privacy@uwm.edu Box 784, Milwaukee WI 53201 | Information: comp-privacy-request@uwm.edu | Gopher: gopher.cs.uwm.edu levine@cs.uwm.edu | Mosaic: gopher://gopher.cs.uwm.edu ---------------------------------+----------------------------------------- ------------------------------ End of Computer Privacy Digest V6 #051 ****************************** .