December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[NEWS] More internet-tax proposals
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> _________________________________________________________________ > Centura > _________________________________________________________________ > INTERNET BEWARE: GOVERNMENTS ARE SMELLING A RICH NEW SOURCE OF TAXES > __________________________________________________________________________ > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net > Copyright &copy 1996 The Boston Globe > (Sep 25, 1996 8:06 p.m. EDT) If taxes are the price we pay for > civilization, the Internet is about to become a lot more civilized. > State and local governments are coming to see on-line computer > networks as a rich, new revenue source, and they want to cash in. > An official of the Massachusetts Department of Revenue said this month > on-line service providers that do business in the state should be > paying a 5 percent sales tax. Those who haven't been paying could face > audits, penalties and demands for back taxes. > The state of Tennessee has demanded on-line services doing business > there turn over their tax records and a count of how many customers > they have in the state. Cities in Texas and Colorado are considering > special on-line taxes. And a recent effort to slap a 6 percent tax on > Internet users in Tacoma, Wash., aroused so much public outrage that > city officials were forced to back off. > Many Internet experts agree that Internet taxes are inevitable. After > all, connecting computers to the Internet is now a $2 billion > business, and people use these networks to buy and sell millions of > dollars in goods and services. [...] > But some also fear the chaos that could result as 50 state governments > and thousands of cities and counties each make their own rules about > taxing computer networks and the transactions that occur on them. > The issue may be given new prominence, thanks to a surprising decision > by a major Internet service provider. In late August, Netcom On-Line > Communication Services Inc. began notifying its Massachusetts > customers the company would start adding the state's 5 percent sales > tax to its bills. Netcom typically charges $19.95 a month for a > personal Internet account, so the tax would amount to $1. Similar > notices were sent to Netcom customers in several other states, > including Illinois and Pennsylvania. > Did the taxing authorities in these states demand their money? Guess > again. Netcom has decided to begin paying the taxes voluntarily. > Thomas Weatherford, Netcom's chief financial officer, said its > accounting firm, Ernst & Young, warned them early this year that > Netcom might be liable for the taxes. [...] > So Netcom contacted state tax officials for clarification. Netcom's > 500,000 customers are scattered throughout the United States, but the > company is focusing on tax laws in Massachusetts and 14 other states > where most of its customers dwell. Weatherford said he still had > received no official word from Massachusetts, but Netcom attorneys had > concluded the company is subject to the state's telecommunication > sales tax. To play it safe, it will begin collecting the tax this > month. Remind me not to sign up with Netcom. > It's probably a smart move. At the Massachusetts Department of > Revenue, acting general counsel William Hazel told the Globe that > Netcom and every other on-line service provider should be paying the > sales tax. > "To the extent that folks are being charged for the ability to > telecommunicate through the Internet... that's taxable," he said. > This situation could change. The state has set up a legislative > commission to review its telecommunications tax policy, with a final > report due next year. But for now, Hazel said, Massachusetts wants its > money, including back taxes from up to seven years ago. Hazel said > some Internet access providers are paying the tax already. > But plenty of others are not. For example, Kristopher Hill, president > of NetWorx Internet Services Inc. in Newburyport, said he believed his > firm didn't have to pay sales tax in any of the dozen states in which > it operates. He wasn't thrilled to hear that he may be wrong. "If we > have to start dealing with Chicago tax law, that'll be a major pain in > my butt," he said. Chicago imposes a tax on telecommunications > services over and above the Illinois state tax. > Hill is even more annoyed by the prospect of being ordered to pay > years of back sales taxes in Massachusetts. He said state officials > never told Internet service providers they were liable for the money, > and to try to collect it now would be unfair. "We would sooner leave > the commonwealth than be subjected to seemingly arbitrary and > ill-defined taxes," Hill said. [...] > Netcom's Weatherford opposes taxes on Internet services but says if > his company pays voluntarily, tax officials should demand payment from > Netcom's competitors. That could mean trouble for America's 3,700 > Internet service providers, many of which are shoestring operations > that will have to set up tax collection procedures. Translation: Netcom is attempting to use regulations to shut down its competitors. > The fuss over Internet service taxes is just the beginning. Another > sticky controversy awaits: How do you tax sales of goods and services > over the Internet? [...] > And then there's the question of which government is entitled to > collect the tax. Say you log on to Ohio-based CompuServe, where you > buy a fruit basket from a firm in California and have it sent to your > mother in Chicago. Which state gets to collect tax on the transaction? > The experts say right now, the answer is unclear. If they think that's "unclear", wait until they start dealing with multinational transactions.... > But tax-hungry governments are hard at work trying to figure it all > out. According to KPMG Peat Marwick, sales of goods and services over > the Internet will reach $125 billion by the year 2000. One way or > another, governments intend to get their share. Note the typical biased phrasing. [...] > Copyright &copy 1996 Nando.net

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FRC's Cathy Cleaver bashes CDA ruling, online "anarchy"
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 07:49:55 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: FRC's Cathy Cleaver bashes CDA ruling, online "anarchy" This is a wonderful article by the Family Research Council's Cathy Cleaver. Her stategy: Rant about porn, rant about children. But ignore that the Internet is not radio or television so different standards should apply. And ignore that another three-judge panel in NYC came to similar conclusions as the Philly ones did. Obviously, the largely Bush- and Reagan-appointed Federal judiciary has been brainwashed by computer geeks. Or perhaps the judges, unlike Ms. Cleaver, actually logged on once or twice. -Declan ************ http://www.frc.org/townhall/FRC/perspective/pv96i3pn.html CYBERCHAOS: NOT FIRST AMENDMENT'S PROMISE by Cathleen A. Cleaver, Esq. The Department of Justice has announced that it will appeal to the Supreme Court the recent Philadelphia federal court's ruling against the Communications Decency Act. That appeal is the right thing to do, and here's why. Not long ago I debated Bob Guccioni, publisher of Penthouse, on the merits of restricting computer pornography and the Philadelphia ruling. Not surprisingly, he was elated by the three-judge panel's decision to strike the indecency provisions, the effect of which was to give a computer pornographer more "free speech" rights than any other speaker in any other forum. For the first time in the history of our country, a porn purveyor may intentionally show sexually explicit pictures to a child without legal jeopardy -- provided the purveyor uses the Internet. First in line to challenge the CDA was, of course, the ACLU and its cyberclones, followed by CompuServe, America Online, and others with a huge financial stake in the unenforceability of the CDA, like Playboy and Penthouse. Guccioni may finally claim the consumer market share which he has heretofore been denied. Not only did the Philadelphia panel strike provisions prohibiting adults from posting sexually explicit materials in public areas of the Internet that children frequent -- like teen chat rooms -- but it also struck the prohibition on e-mailing a Penthouse centerfold (or the like) directly to a specific child who is known by the sender to be a child. In the words of the Department of Justice: "Never before in the history of telecommunications media in the United States has so much indecent (and obscene) material been so easily accessible by so many minors in so many American homes with so few restrictions." To say the ruling is flawed is a double understatement. Not only is the decision based on legal theories directly contrary to Supreme Court precedent and incorrect assumptions about the capabilities of Internet technology, but it is less a ruling than a trio of separate opinions. Each judge took his turn chiding Congress for daring to inhibit the liberty of cyberspace pioneers, however ruthless, in the interest of children and the greater cybercommunity. Highlights from the lengthy trilogy include conclusions that it is "either technologically impossible or economically prohibitive" to comply with the CDA, that the term 'indecent' is altogether too vague, and that, "just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of unfettered speech." These conclusions defy fact, law, and logic, respectively. Given that some on-line pornographers currently screen and restrict children from their sites, it cannot be said that compliance is impossible. Moreover, new technology is being developed at dizzying speed to address a variety of Internet challenges, such as consumer transaction security and the protection of property rights of amateur musicians who exchange their songs, making it all the more evident that it is really lack of will and not ability which makes Internet advocates cry "foul." As to expense, this callous court complains about the economic burden the CDA would impose on distributors of pornography, while finding it good and proper for parents alone to incur the costs, however great, of protecting their children. Outside the sacred realm of cyberspace, distributors of pornography routinely incur expenses to shield children. To cite just one example, "blinder racks" must be purchased and installed at newsstands so that children do not see offensive sex magazine covers. This economic burden flows directly from the legal responsibility these distributors bear to shield this material from minors. Software blocking programs, on the other hand, are initially expensive for parents, need frequent updating (at considerable expense), are easily circumvented by computer-savvy kids, and are simply incapable of screening much of the pornography. Surfwatch, the leading software blocker, admitted in the CDA hearing to missing up to 800 sexually explicit sites each month! Moreover, it goes without saying that a software blocking program can only work on a family's home computer where it is installed. What happens when the kids go next door or, for that matter, to the public library? The American Library Association proclaimed in the Philadelphia court that, as a matter of solemn principle, it will never employ software screening programs in its libraries' computers -- not even when children use them. This to-hell-with-children sentiment is reflected by the judges and echoes throughout their opinions. Chief Judge Sloviter's opinion even concludes that for "content providers . . . to review all of their material" to determine which of it is sexually explicit is surely "a burden one should not have to bear." What? The content provider is in the best position to determine whether his material contains patently offensive depictions of sexual or excretory activities, and that is why our laws have always required him to do just that. The allocation of this burden to the speaker, as opposed to the consumer of the speech, not only carries the weight of unanimous legal precedent, but also has the benefit of being practical. It is virtually a truism to say that, as between speaker and consumer, the speaker is in the better position to know the content of his speech. Judge Sloviter would remove a reasonable burden from content providers and replace it with the enormous and nearly impossible burden on parents to first locate, then evaluate, and then block pornographic material in an effort to protect their children. Their quarrel with the indecency standard reveals that the judges are either ill-informed or ill-intentioned. An indecent communication is one "that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or organs." This definition has been consistently upheld in every case in which it has been reviewed, including at the Supreme Court, which, most recently in the cable pornography case of Denver Area Educational Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, held the standard to be "not impermissibly vague." As if to justify their awkward conclusion, the court lists as examples of "threatened" speech material which simply could not fall within the definition of indecency, such as discussions of recent movies or ancient Indian statues or articles about human rights violations. To serve their end, the judges conveniently, but not subtly, ignore the requirement that the materials be evaluated "in context." No court has ever construed this standard to encompass, without any consideration of context, all material of literary or artistic value that is somehow related to sexuality. Not to be topped, Judge Dalzell proclaims: "Any content-based regulation of the Internet, no matter how benign the purpose, could burn the global village to roast the pig." Really? What about fraud -- may we not protect consumers in cyberspace? May we not ban child pornography or enforce copyright violations on-line? Would these content-based regulations burn the village, too? If the First Amendment's promise to this new technology is indeed chaos and anarchy, then perhaps Judge Dalzell is right. But before we too quickly agree with this visionary from the federal bench, we ought to ask ourselves how we have survived and thrived as a democracy for two centuries upon the bedrock of ordered liberty, the enemy of chaos and anarchy. The Supreme Court ought to roundly denounce this federal panel's decision. To affirm it would be to rob our children of the opportunity to participate in this great new communications medium, or worse, to sacrifice them to perversions and excesses for the convenience and pleasure of the worst malefactors on-line -- in effect, to preserve the pornographers' new found sanctuary known as cyberspace. -- 9/9/96 Cathleen A. Cleaver, Esq. is Director of Legal Studies at the Family Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based research and educational organization. Miss Cleaver has extensive experience in pornography litigation and legislation. ###

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e$: NSA Fluffy FUD?
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- I just got off the phone with a reporter who was interviewing me for a comment in the paper on Cybercash's "CyberCoin" mini-money protocol. My comment was that I hadn't paid much attention to it, because I figured it was yet another book-entry system, but, since he e-mailed me ahead of time, I went to look at their FAQ on the web, and, yup, sure enough, it was yet another book-entry system. :-). For the record, I have no problems with Cybercash, themselves. If anyone's going to do a book-entry system, it might as well be Cybercash. What? What about CyberCoin? Oh. Yeah. CyberCoin. Well, the best way I can figure, it's a transaction accumulator for either your credit card or debit card, like First Virtual does for small transactions, only it settles way much quicker, like less than 90 days. :-). On the privacy standpoint, it hides transactions from the merchant, which is cool, but not from the bank, which is not cool. What do you expect from a book-entry system? ;-). Cybercash at least makes no claims for anonymity, unlike other transaction systems who will remain nameless... Cybercash is at <http://cybercash.com> if you want more details. Almost as an afterthought, the reporter said that someone at the NSA had cranked out a for-public report, which he had just gotten a fax of, decrying the succeptability of digital bearer certificate issuers in general, digital cash issuers in particular, to rubber-hose attacks on their private keys. The "Print off a trillion dollars in digimarks, buddy, or we'll kill 'Fluffy', your cat, here..." scenario. Maybe we can call it a Fluffy-the-cat attack... The first time I heard of this old chestnut, of course, was from the lips of Nathaniel Borenstein, who was pushing First Virtual rather strenously at the time, as a solution to that problem, among others, up to, but not including, dandruff and world peace. This was before he invented the keyboard sniffer, so I was actually listening to him, in those days. :-). Now it seems the NSA has picked up the Nathaniel's fumbled ball and is running with it for all they're worth. Of course, the best way to deal with this from a technical standpoint is not technically, of course, but with a market model: one with lots of issuers, trustees, protocol designers, software developers, buyers and sellers, in one great big robust, happy, many-to-many competitive clusterfuck of digital commerce. Not to mention, of course, expiry dates on the digital bearer certificates itself. Anyway, has anyone *else* seen this apocryphal NSA paper yet? Is it on the web? I'm sure (he said, volunteering someone else's services unasked yet again) that someone like John Young would be interested in seeing that fax... So, the reporter asks, do I think that Citicorp should get into the business of issuing digital cash? Well, I guess not. Not according to the NSA, anyway, especially if John Reed has a cat named 'Fluffy'. Cheers, Bob Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----BY SAFEMAIL----- Version: 1.0b3 iQCVAwUBMlBBLfgyLN8bw6ZVAQENFQP9HKP1TdH27b7e2oruWFK1uc/aALOWPPUy jU+zCS+xUgYwdTlFiI2+6xD/jiylU9Twf6rgX63NQ3JNl1rQhmVW8wIhArgbakkg 3/zxWeMJ+Bc/1N0t+XsHdB3MQ07HygaPyjKED73Exy2uO60XuY8Je2isM4fr2B4d 85OeDCb606Q= =61Gj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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3rd European Assembly on Telework and New Ways of Working
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu" 25-SEP-1996 00:10:23.83 From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> X-URL: http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html X-Mailing-List: <rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> archive/latest/1317 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Tue, 24 Sep 1996 08:31:26 +0200 From: brennert(a)sun1.alpin.or.at (Barbara Rennert-Buchegger) [...] Preliminary Programme Telework '96 3rd European Assembly on Telework and New Ways of Working WORKING IN A WIDER EUROPE November 4 - 6, 1996, City Hall, Vienna, Austria organized by European Community Telework Forum (ECTF) in association with European Commission City of Vienna Federal Ministry of Science, Transports and the Arts Chamber of Labour of Vienna European Trade Unions Confederation Austrian Trade Unions Confederation --------------------------------------------------------------- Patronage Thomas KLESTIL - President of the Federal Republic of Austria Honorary Presidency Martin Bangemann - European Commission, Commissioner of DG XIII (Belgium) Rudolf SCHOLTEN - Federal Minister of Science, Transport and the Arts (Austria) Michael HAeUPL - Mayor of the City of Vienna (Austria) Hannes SWOBODA - Councillor for Urban Planning and Foreign Affairs (Austria) Assembly Co-ordinator Josef HOCHGERNER - Centre for Social Innovation, ECTF (Austria) Programme Chair Enrique de la SERNA - INNOVA Intl., ECTF (Italy) Christine GAUTHIER - CATRAL (France) Franz NAHRADA - Globally Integrated Village Environment, CSI (Austria) Assembly Steering Committee Katarina ALMQUIST - NUTEK/Assembly Co-ordinator 1997 (Sweden) Eduardo BARRERA CORTEZ - INMARK, ECTF (Spain) Karl BONOMEO - TeleVillage Bruck an der Leitung (Austria) Bruno BUCHBERGER - Softwarepark Hagenberg (Austria) Renate CZESKLEBA - Austrian Trade Union Confederation (Austria) Philippe DORIN - CATRAL (France) Charles GRANTHAM - ISDW & CSI (USA) Noel HODSON - SW 2000, ECTF (United Kingdom) Arnold KLOTZ - Planning Director of the City of Vienna (Austria) Brigitta MLINEK - Chamber of Labour of Vienna (Austria) Jack NILLES - JALA, ECTF (USA) Walter PAAVONEN - ECTF (Sweden) Andrew PAGE - ECTF (United Kingdom) Ingolf SCHAeDLER - Federal Ministry of Science, Transport and the Arts (Austria) Alain VEYRET - IDATE, ECTF (France) European Commission Peter JOHNSTON - DG XIII Maarten BOTTERMAN - DG XIII European Trade Unions Confederation (ETUC) Emilio GABAGLIO --------------------------------------------------------------- Organization European Community Telework Forum ECTF Austria Secretariat Center for Social Innovation CSI Hettenkofergasse 13 A-1160 Wien Tel. +43-1-495 04 42-41 Fax +43-1-495 04 42-40 eMail j.hochgerner(a)magnet.at ECTF International Secretariat Santa Cruz de Mercenado, 33 E-28015 Madrid Tel. +34-1-541 72 64 Fax +34-1-559 92 74 eMail eb.ectf(a)mad.servicom.es Conference Secretariat bco - j. breit congress organisation GmbH Lenaugasse 11/36 A-1080 Wien Tel. +43-1-403 28 20 Fax +43-1-406 77 52 eMail bco.breit(a)magnet.at ATTENTION: As of Monday, November 4, 1996, the conference secretariat will be located at the congress venue (City Hall). Hotel reservation and travel arrangements Austropa - Interconvention P.O.Box 30 A-1043 Wien Tel. +43-1-589 25-114 Fax +43-1-586 71 27 eMail austropa(a)oevb.co.at Telework '96 on the Web http://www.bco.co.at/bco/tw96/ The ECTF-HomePage on the Web http://www.agora.stm.it/ectf/ectfhome.html --------------------------------------------------------------- Preface Rudolf ScholtenFederal Minister of Science, Transport and the Arts The diffusion of telework is among the central phenomena characterizing the contemporary technical and economic developments at a global state. Faced with the restructuring of labour-markets and work, and witnessing the rapidity of innovation within the information society it is the task of the responsible analyst to consider the social impact of telework detached from either technological euphoria or resigned cultural pessimism. In parallel to the growth of a worldwide net and the trends toward the liberalisation of the telecom-markets the promotion of telework provides us with seductive visions: Among others there is the promise to harmonize classical antagonisms like those between urban and the rural areas or between work and leisure-time. Accordingly teleworkers may expect a sheltered life in the idyl of the village environment or the fond of the family whilst being mobile beyond national borders at the same time. There is the assumption that women in particular will no longer be threatened by breaks of their professional careers. Companies are expected to increase profits due to increased productivity and organisational innovation. Positive effects on the labour-market and the natural environment are likewise foreseen. No doubt telework bears chances for the future. Nevertheless, we should not forget to take possible disadvantages into account: For example, the mingling of work and private sphere, relevant for mere homebased work, can be a factor of increased individual mental stress. The creation of new patterns of work might be connected with the loss of old types of jobs. Tendencies toward individualisation and the decline of social solidarity might be intensified. Issues like labour legislation and the threatening decrease of social security urgently need to be discussed. If we were to describe the situation as an open game of chances and risks, a demand for creative policies to shape our future prospects positively and consciously gains evidence. This demand shall be met by "Telework 96": The exchange of experiences between science and policy-makers, industry and trade unions is organized not only in order to analyse the present situation, but also with a view of preparing solutions for the near future. "Working in a Wider Europe" may be read in a twofold way: as referring to an extension of individual life perspectives as well as a metaphor for the promotion of the process of the European integration, whereby the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) will be of particular interest. The use of advanced technology and traditional ways of decision-making can not be mentioned without referring to mechanisms of exclusion. In contrast, within and around "Telework 96" a wide range of events are organized for adressing various types of institutions and groups of special interest, including pupils, female workers, and persons in search of employment. Rudolf Scholten --------------------------------------------------------------- About the Assembly Focus: European integration, particularly Central and Eastern Europe; transnational standards for telework Main topics: Getting people to work; Training for life in the Information Society; Working towards sustainability Format: Scientific conference & political assembly & exhibition of applications and cases Participants: Leading international experts, practitioners, scientists, politicians, representatives from business, trade unions and public administration and NGO's Telework 96 provides the largest and most comprehensive platform to both observe and promote progress of teleworking in Europe. It is the lead event of the European Telework Week 1996 (ETW 96), which is held under the auspices of the European Commission (DG XIII) from November 4-11, 1996. It is called an "assembly" because of its composition comprising elements of a scientific conference with political debates and of a business exhibition as well. Companies, regional councils, telework pilots (e.g. tele-cottages) and other institutions are invited to participate in an exhibition which is open to the public. Conference meetings in plenaries and parallel sessions are open to experts and representatives of basicly five major societal players in the field: (1) Employers (companies, associations of industrialists, Chambers of Commerce) (2) Employees (Trade Unions, Shop Stewards, Chambers of Labour, associations of teleworkers) (3) Politics (from communal, regional, national to European and transnational level, particularly the Inter-Parliamentary Special Interest Group) (4) Science (experts and analysts of many kinds, consultants and researchers from private and public research centres, universities and international institutions) (5) NGO's (e.g. environmentalist groupings, women's organisations, youth groups). Public administration on municipal, regional, federal or European level of course also plays a role which may e.g. in one case appear in the area of politics or in another in that of the employers. In the overall format speakers of the assembly are selected and invited representatives of these groups. Participants of course will represent an even wider spectrum and will have in many regards concurrent and additional knowledge and experience in the themes the assembly deals with. Hence methods and procedures will be imposed to prevent the assembly from becoming a sort of closed shop where experts, known to each other quite well, tell experts what is the experts expertise. Instruments in this regard are: + Careful selection of speakers in the opening event (Monday evening), the plenaries and the parallel track sessions both on Tuesday and Wednesday. + Offering an "Open Forum (OF)" concerning the three main topics (track 1: Work, track 2: Training; track 3: Sustainability). This allows interested observers and participants to send in abstracts and posters about their work (be it in research, teleworking pilots, publishing etc.). These contributions will be taken care of by the scientific organizers in the following way: Besides the abstracts of the invited lectures contributions to the OF will be listed in the Preceedings; in each of the track sessions a discussion will be held on how to best publish and further proceed with these pools of knowledge; the "posters" will be exhibited, and the abstracts of written contributions will be distributed during the assembly; publication will be offered on the web (Telework 96 homepage) and a selection of the most relevant contributions will be printed after the event as "Proceedings 2" apart from the lectures of invited speakers ("Proceedings 1"). + The invention of a "Worker's Tele-Corner": A dedicated workplace in the conference area is connected to a server, bearing all the information brought in through the OF, allowing interested people from around the globe to share information on their teleworking experiences, needs and maybe marketable results. Further to that there will be links not only to the Telework 96 and ECTF homepages, but also to the ETW website http://www.eto.org.uk (e-mail: etw96-info(a)eto.org.uk) ACTS and Telematics projects networks, and various databanks (building up an "electronic environment" of Telework 96). + Teleconferencing between the major events within the assembly and other European conferences operated within the European Telework Week. + Arranging "additional events" in Vienna, stimulated by Telework 96 and being also integrated in the framework of the European Telework Week. + Allowing manyfold concertation meetings among telework oriented European research and development projects. Josef Hochgerner, Assembly Co-ordinator Vienna, June 1996 --------------------------------------------------------------- General Information Conference fee until September 30, 1996: Participants ATS 6.300,-- / 480,-- ECU Students ATS 2.000,-- / 155,-- ECU(Confirmation of the university has to be enclosed) Day Tickets ATS 4.000,-- / 310,-- ECU after September 30, 1996: Participants ATS 7.200,-- / 550,-- ECU Students ATS 2.400,-- / 185,-- ECU (Confirmation of the university has to be enclosed) Day Tickets ATS 4.000,-- / 310,-- ECU Reduced fees (e.g. for members of non profit organizations or participants from Central and Eastern Europe) are available on request.Press representatives: Please contact the conference secretariat to receive an accreditation. Fee includes Participation in all lectures and sessions, two lunches, coffee breaks, cocktail reception, programme, abstract book and proceedings. Evening reception Upon invitation by the Mayor of Vienna. Payment The fee is payable in international money order to: ECTF Austria - "Telework 96" Account Nr. 784 070 377 Bank Code 20151 Bank Austria, Box 35, A-1011 Vienna without charges for the beneficiary or enclose a cheque to your registration (ATS 2.500,-- maximum per cheque). Confirmation of registration only after receipt of payment! If you pay the fee per bank transfer after October 1, 1996 and do not receive a confirmation of registration, please bring a copy of the money transfer with you. Cancellations Cancellations made prior to October 1, 1996 will be charged 50% of the assembly fee (only written cancellations can be accepted). We regret that after this date no cancellations can be accepted. Exhibition In the course of the assembly an exhibition presents the most advanced technologies and services to support individuals and organi-zations who are already or wish to start teleworking. It will be open to the assembly audience as well as to the public. The exhibition will take place in the City Hall around the conference rooms. Information about participation is available at the conference secretariat. Poster Presentations and Contributions to the "Open Forum" Poster presentations and abstracts to the "Open Forum" will be accepted until September 30, 1996. Please use the abstract form for sending your submission. Poster size: Max. 90 cm width, 140 cm height. Only participants of the conference can present a poster. Poster presentation does not result into any reduction of the conference fee. Venue The Vienna City Hall ("Rathaus") is located in the heart of the city close to the "Ring". It can be reached by underground (U2, station "Rathaus") and tram (D, 1, 2, station "Rathausplatz, Burgtheater"). Languages Plenary sessions will be interpreted from and into German, English and French, the parallel sessions will be held in English. Badges Please note that the badges will be needed for access to all scientific and included social events of the conference. Parking In the area around the City Hall parking is only allowed for max. 90 minutes with a special ticket. It is recommended to park cars in one of the garages close to the congress venue. Airport The Vienna International Airport is located about 16 km from the city centre. >From the airport the city can be reached - by the airport bus (ATS 70,-- per person) to "City Air Terminal" at the Hotel Hilton - by Railway / "Schnellbahn" (ATS 34,-- per person) to the station "Wien Mitte" - by cab (ATS 400,-- - 600,-- per cab) Climate In November the weather in Vienna is cool, but usually not unpleasant. It is recommended to take warm clothes with you. --------------------------------------------------------------- Programme Monday, November 4, 1996 08.00 Registration 09.00 - 17.00 Concertation meetings of European projects on teleworking: 1) ACTS-Concertation Meeting of the GA Telework Chain, involving particularly DIPLOMAT (ACTS 10095, "The European Charter for Telework") and ETD (ACTS 10081, "European Telework Development"). Partners/representatives of other ACTS projects related to telework are invited to participate. 2) Telematics programme, particularly telework oriented TURA-projects ("Telematics for Urban and Rural Areas") will be invited to participate in a "trans-programme" communication to exchange experiences and further exploitation of results across the programmes. 3) Established contacts to DG V and the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions will lead to their presence in this meeting too; transfer of knowledge is enhanced among the DG's involved and projects started within the Community Initiatives (ADAPT, EMPLOYMENT). Particularly the High Level Expert Group of DG V ("Flynn Commission") is invited to participate. Meeting rooms and communication facilities are available to be arranged according to demand. The City of Vienna offers technical assistance to this meeting as well as regarding "Telework 96", because the municipality of Vienna itself participates in several European projects and took on the "Bangemann Challenge". Thus the informatics department will use the Telework Assembly as a demonstrator of its ability of networking and building an electronic environment for the conference. This will apply also to some of the additional events which will take place during the ETW, and secure permanence of information and communication technologies implementation (teleworking facilities) set up to enhance the success of Telework 96 and further achievements of the European Telework Week. 18.30 Welcome Cocktail Welcome Address: Andrew PAGE - President of the ECTF (United Kingdom) 19.30 Evening Opening Event "Tele-Future Without Work?" Rudolf SCHOLTEN - Federal Minister of Science, Transport and the Arts (Austria) Michael HAeUPL - Mayor of the City of Vienna (Austria) (R) Andrew MILLER - Member of the British Parliament (United Kingdom) Upon invitation by Telework 96 and the City of Vienna prominent speakers will present their view on the conference topics from various points. --------------------------------------------------------------- Programme Tuesday, November 5, 1996 PLENARY SESSION "European Dimensions of Teleworking" Moderation: Josef Broukal - ORF / Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (Austria) 09.00 - 09.20 Hannes SWOBODA - Councillor f. Urban Planning and Foreign Affairs (Austria) Cities and the new division of labour in Europe 09.20 - 09.40 Robert VERRUE - Europ. Commission, Director General of DG XIII (Belgium) European policies on telework 09.40 - 10.00 Discussion period 10.00 - 10.30 Etele BARATH - Member of the Hungarian Parliament (Hungary) Building the European Information Society - the Hungarian perspective 10.30 - 11.00 Shalini VENTURELLI - American University, Washington D.C. (USA) The policy design of the global Information Society Economic, political and cultural dimensions 11.00 - 11.20 Coffee Break 11.20 - 12.00 Keynote Address by Wouter VAN DIEREN - Institute for Environment and System Analysis (Netherlands) 12.00 - 12.30 Discussion period 12.30 - 14.00 Lunch Break Lunch will be served in the City Hall close to the conference rooms 14.00 - 18.00 TRACKS 1 - 3 (see following pages) 19.30 Evening reception upon invitation by the Mayor of Vienna Videoconference with representatives of Prague and Budapest and corresponding events within the European Telework Week. Cocktail reception: Specialities from Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic --------------------------------------------------------------- TRACK 1 GETTING PEOPLE TO WORK Tuesday, November 5, 1996 14.00 - 17.30 Wednesday, November 6, 1996 09.00 - 10.45 Restructuring national as well as international labour markets and unemployment will remain top political issues of the next years. Telework '96 will highlight the impact of telework and its legal aspects within new organisational frames of companies, strategic alliances, civic cooperation (NGO's) and private-public partnership. Transnational teleworking may weaken national power. Thus cultural borders and new balances will also appear in the scope of the conference. Co-ordinators: Renate CZESKLEBA - Austrian Trade Unions Confederation (Austria) Andrew MILLER - Interparliamentary Special Interest Group (United Kingdom) Preliminary List of Presentations and Contributions Eduardo BARRERA CORTEZ - INMARK, ECTF (Spain) Towards a European employment agency for teleworkers Willy BUSCHAK - European Trade Unions Confederation (Belgium) Xavier DARMSTAEDTER - President of the Belgian TeleWorking Association, Managing Director of Fischer & Lorenz Benelux (Belgium) Can telework generate employment? - The role of Teleworking Associations Ante JAMTLID - VINDUE (Sweden) / Nathalie FAY - ISDW (USA) Creating job opportunities by telework development joint venture Peter JOHNSTON - Europ. Commission, DG XIII, Head of Unit (Belgium) A Vision for 2010 Georg KAPSCH - Kapsch AG (Austria) Jens KITTELSEN - European Commission, DG V (Belgium) Nicole TURBE-SUETENS - Syntaxia (France) Telework and labour relations Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Ireland) European RTD-projects on teleworking (DIPLOMAT, ETD, DEMETER, MIRTI, TECODIS ...) Open Forum - Discussion --------------------------------------------------------------- TRACK 2 TRAINING FOR LIFE IN THE INFORMATION SOCIETY Tuesday, November 5, 1996 14.00 - 17.30 Wednesday, November 6, 1996 09.00 - 10.45 New ways of teaching, learning, vocational training and continuous education are indispensable prereqisites of socially and economically desirable modes of teleworking. Main topics within this session will be interactive distance learning, knowledge bases and the use of intellectual capital. International links and networks of "virtual colleges" will become enhanced by Telework '96. Co-ordinators: Ina WAGNER - University of Technology (Austria) Noel HODSON - SW 2000 (United Kingdom) Preliminary List of Presentations and Contributions Brendan McCARTHY - Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne (Australia) Learning experiment on teleworking with students Andrew FRAYLING - Protocol Ltd. (United Kingdom) IPR - Intellectual property rights and the issues facing the teleworker Charles GRANTHAM - Institute for the Study of Distributed Work (USA) Using new ways of work to create intellectual capital Sigram SCHINDLER, Marc BUCHMANN - Teles GmbH Berlin (Germany) ICARE 9000: A Teletraining Platform for SME's to gain the ISO 9000 Certification Invited speaker of the University of Oxford (United Kingdom) Interactive Distance Learning (IDLE) in Oxford Johann GUeNTHER / Angelika VOLST - Donau University (Austria) TELEMACHOS: Teleuniversity for telematics management Commercial Training Centres Open Forum - Discussion --------------------------------------------------------------- TRACK 3 WORKING TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY Tuesday, November 5, 1996 14.00 - 17.30 Wednesday, November 6, 1996 09.00 - 10.45 Further implementation of tele-centres and urban telematics creates a new notion of community, both in cities and rural areas. This entangles a series of social issues and paradox interventions. A changing environment may evolve in the wake of the distribution of innovative forms of communication and transportation. Particularly regarding countries in CEE the eventual availability of "shortcuts to sustainability" will be addressed. Co-ordinators: Franz NAHRADA - Globally Integrated Village Environment/CSI (Austria) Katarina ALMQUIST - NUTEK (Sweden) Preliminary List of Presentations and Contributions Eric BRITTON - EcoPlan International (France) Sustainability - from thought to action Mats ENGSTROeM, Walter PAAVONEN - Nordplan (Sweden) Sustainable principles for working organizations Michael ERTEL (Germany) Health and safety aspects of teleworking Maria FISCHER-KOWALSKI - Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Continuing Education (Austria) Societal Metabolism Michel GIRAUD - Isle de France Neighbourhood Offices Network (France) Distance working - An asset for sustainable development? Reza KAZEMIAN - University of Stockholm (Sweden) Telematics on the societal and spatial structures of cities and their hinterlands A Project for sustainable location design Robert PESTEL - European Commission (Belgium) Sustainability in the information society? F.J. RADERMACHER - Forschungsinstitut fur anwendungsorientierte Wissensverarbeitung (Germany) Stable paths into a sustainable world Open Forum - Discussion --------------------------------------------------------------- Programme Wednesday, November 6, 1996 09.00 - 10.45 Continuation of Tracks 1 - 3 09.00 - 10.45 Parallel Meeting of the European Inter-Parliamentary Special Interest Group 10.45 - 11.00 Coffee Break PLENARY SESSION Moderator: Marion FUGLIEWICZ - Communications Consultant (Austria) 11.00 - 12.00 Reports from Tracks 1 - 3 and the Inter-Parliamentary Special Interest Group 12.00 - 12.30 Discussion period 12.30 - 14.00 Lunch Lunch will be served in the City Hall close to the conference rooms 14.00 - 16.00 Round Table Discussion: Political Implications Representative of the Austrian Government Ines UUSMAN - Minister of Transport and Communication (Sweden) European Ministers for Telecom, Work and Social Affairs Representatives of Central and Eastern European Countries Fritz VERZETNITSCH - President of the European Trade Unions Confederation Senior Industrialists European Parliament High Level Expert Group of DG V European Commission Opera, Theater or Concert tickets for your last evening in Vienna On request Austropa Interconvention provides opera, theater or concert tickets. Programmes are available one month in advance. Tickets can be confirmed the earliest 1 month prior to the performance. Prices depend on the seat category and cast. Ticket prices for the Viennese State Opera range from ATS 350, to ATS 2300,, for Musicals from ATS 310, to 1200,, for concerts and other plays from ATS 300, to 850, plus 25% per ticket advance booking fee. On November 6, 1996, tickets are available for: Vienna State Opera - Stifelio by Giuseppe Verdi - Carreras, Zampieri, Bruson Please note: Due to this special performance tickets will not be available at regular rates (supplement of approx. 40-50%). We have to point out that for this performance only a very small number of tickets will be available. Volksoper: Land des Laechelns by Franz Lehar Musicals: Theater an der Wien: Elisabeth (in German) Raimund Theater: Beauty and the Beast (in German) --------------------------------------------------------------- Additional Events >From Wednesday, 6th of November, onwards a series of relevant workshops, discussions, professional assemblies and promotion activities about teleworking will take place to address a broad local public . These events will be organized by institutions (e.g. Trade Unions or the Chamber of Commerce, schools), existing tele-centres and tele-houses or companies, associations and NGO's, addressing pupils, female workers, unemployed, and people who are looking for new jobs or alternatives to their current working situation. Preliminary List of additional events of Telework 96 Austrian Network of Women (Oesterreichisches Frauennetzwerk) - Workshop "Women on the Data-Highway" Trade Union of Service Industries (Gewerkschaft der Privatangestellten, GPA) - p.r. activities for collective and in-company agreements on Teleworking Telecentre Autokaderstrasse, Vienna - Open House Telecentre of Kapsch AG, Vienna - Open House Ericsson - Open House Federal Ministry of Education/Educational Council of Vienna - Essay Competition among pupils Tele-House Ltd. of Lower Austria - Local Demonstrators Telecentre Bruck - Planning Workshop Telecentre Hermagor - Planning Workshop Telecentre Pinkafeld - Planning Workshop --------------------------------------------------------------- Accompanying Persons' Programme (Optional Tours) Vouchers for optional tours will be handed over to the participants/accompanying persons at the AUSTROPA INTERCONVENTION DESK. AUSTROPA INTERCONVENTION reserves the right to cancel tours should the minimum number of people not be reached. Tuesday, November 5, 1996 City Tour: "Historic Vienna" including a visit to the Schoenbrunn Palace Departure from the Rathaus at 9 AM, duration approx. 3 This tour gives an overall view of the city and also leads to some prominent sights. Driving along the Ringstrasse, a circular boulevard of 4 kilometers, which was built during mid last century, one can see many impressive buildings, such as the State Opera, the Burgtheater, various Museums, the Parliament, the City Hall and the University. The highlight of the tour is the visit to the Schoenbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Austrian Emperors. Price per person, incl. bus tour, guide and entrance fee ATS 320, Minimum of 25 people per bus Excursion: "Kahlenberg - Klosterneuburg" Departure from the Rathaus at 2PM, duration approx. 3 hours On the way to the Danube the bus drives through the north eastern part of the city offering a magnificent view of the hills surrounding Vienna, the so called "Wienerwald". Via the scenic route and passing through some well-known Heurigen villages, you reach the Kahlenberg. This lookout offers a good view of the entire city. The bus tour continues to Klosterneuburg, the first residence of the Babenberg family in the area of Vienna during the early medieval times. The most prominent site to visit is the Abbey of the Augustinian Friars, founded before 1108. The unique romanesque Verdun Altar with its 51 enamelled tablets by Nikolaus von Werden, dated 1181, is the most valuable piece of art in the abbey. Price per person, incl. bus tour, guide and entrance fees ATS 290, Minimum of 25 people per bus Wednesday, November 6, 1996 Arts and Crafts in Vienna Departure from the Rathaus at 9.30AM, duration approx. 2 The "Augarten" Porcelain Manufactory was established in Vienna as early as 1718. Many of the common designs still have their origin in the times of Empress Maria Theresia who recognized the importance of creative craftsmanship for economy. You will be guided through the production area and the adjacent showroom. The Museum of Applied Arts, recently renovated, houses a large collection of furniture, glass and objects for daily use from baroque times to the beginning of the 20th century. Particularly interesting are cutlery, jewellery etc. by Kolo Moser, all types of chairs by the Thonet Brothers and designs by Josef Hofmann. Price per person, incl. bus tour, guide and entrance fees ATS 320, Minimum of 25 people per bus Imperial Vienna: Treasury and Imperial Burial Vault Meeting place: Rathaus at 2PM, duration approx. 2 The treasury is the oldest part of the Hofburg, mentioned already in the 13th century and contains a display of priceless treasures that bears witness to the former imperial power: insignias and jewels over a thousand years old of the Roman-German Empire and the treasury of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Afterwards, visit of the Imperial Burial Vault, where more than 130 Habsburgs were burried, among them 12 emperors and 16 empresses. The design of the coffins shows the change in the comprehension of arts over three centuries. Price per person, incl. guide and entrance fees ATS 250, Minimum of 15 people per group Tours are subject to change. --------------------------------------------------------------- Hotel and Travel Arrangements Austropa-Interconvention, Oesterreichisches Verkehrsburo AG, has been entrusted by the organising committee to handle all hotel reservations and asks all participants, to reserve rooms with the enclosed hotel reservation form only. The exact indication of arrival and departure dates, as well as the desired hotel category is necessary. Please make your selection of hotel category according to the following list. Should the requested category not be available anymore, a booking in the next higher category will be made. All prices quoted are per night, per room and include daily breakfast, service charges and all taxes. 1. Category A**** Deposit ATS 2.000, per room Single room ATS 980, to ATS 1.600, Double room ATS 1.450, to ATS 2.360, 2. Category B *** Deposit ATS 1.500, per room Single room ATS 650, to ATS 980, Double room ATS 990, to ATS 1.380, 3. Pension - Category B*** Deposit ATS 1.000, per room Single room ATS 650, Double room ATS 1.100, to ATS 1.290, All rooms with bath or shower and toilette. Please book your hotel before September 30, 1996 Methods of payment for hotel deposits and optional tours Please send a cheque or money order together with the hotel accommodation booking form to Austropa Interconvention, P.O.Box 30, A-1043 Vienna, Austria, or make a bank transfer FREE OF BANK CHARGES to the AUSTROPA account no.: 0035-14775/00 at the Creditanstalt-Bankverein, Vienna, bankcode 11.000. All payments are to be made in Austrian Schillings (ATS). Please do not forget to indicate the name of the participant and the purpose of payment. After the receipt of your deposit we will send you a hotel voucher, indicating the name and exact address of the hotel booked. Kindly inform Austropa Interconvention immediately of any changes in the dates of arrival or departure and in case of cancellation. For cancellations up to one week prior to arrival, a handling fee of ATS 300, per booking will be charged. Afterwards, no more refunds of hotel deposits will be possible. --------------------------------------------------------------- All inclusive Flight Arrangements Austropa Interconvention in cooperation with Austrian Airlines and other IATA carriers offers the participants of the "TELEWORK '96 Congress" all inclusive flight arrangements. These arrangements include the following services: Economy class return ticket on regular flights, 20 kg (44 lbs) baggage allowance, 5 nights accommodation in a double room with bath/shower/WC of hotels in the 3*** category, buffet breakfast, service charges, taxes, transfer from the airport to the hotel and vice versa. All airport taxes are INCLUDED. For participants, travelling alone, please add the single room supplement as listed below. Booking deadline: September 30, 1996. Payment: Please note, that your ticket can be issued only after receipt of full prepayment. Tickets will be mailed to participants after September 30, 1996. Cancellation policies: In case of cancellation or changes before September 30, 1996, Austropa Interconvention will charge a handling fee of ATS 1.000, per person. For cancellations after September 30, 50% of the total cost of the flight arrangement will be charged to the participant. Changes of flight dates are not possible after September 30. All cancellations and changes have to be made in writing. Flight dates: Arrival in Vienna: November 2, 1996 Departure from Vienna: November 7, 1996 If you wish to book different dates or destinations than indicated, please contact Austropa Interconvention. All prices are in Austrian Schillings and are based on ticket prices and exchange rates per January 1996. Prices are subject to changes. Sunday rule applies. Place of Dep *** Hotel Rom 9.785,-- Paris 9.975,-- London 8.295,-- Madrid 10.745,-- Lissabon 11.080,-- Genf 9.540,-- Zurich 9.025,-- Kopenhagen 9.930,-- Amsterdam 9.960,-- Stockholm 10.480,-- Helsinki 12.285,-- Hamburg 11.925,-- Dusseldorf 11.523,-- Frankfurt 10.385,-- Stuttgart 10.015,-- Munchen 8.685,-- Berlin 10.530,-- Dresden 9.965,-- Leipzig 9.965,-- Bremen 12.970,-- Munster 12.645,-- Friedrichshafen 13.530,-- Single room supplement for 5 nights, Hotel *** ATS 800,

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the theory of split currency
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fred Foldvary <ffoldvar(a)jfku.jfku.edu> wrote: > Is there a name for a dual or split currency, in which > there is one currency for domestic use and another, different > appearing, currency for foreign usage? > > Does anyone know of any country which has had such a > split currency? Many third world nations employed this system, one currency for internal use only, and one currency for international transactions. The international currency was sometimes denominated in hard currency, and reasonably convertible into it. This strategy was frequently associated with police state tactics, lawless imprisonment, and swift execution, for vaguely defined economic crimes. It has become substantially less common in the nineties. The external currency tended to spread into the internal economy, despite police state measures to prevent this from happening, and the internal currency tended to become worthless and could only be spent while holding a gun to the head of the person accepting it. In countries employing this system, women, and often children of both sexes, are often cheaply available for sexual purposes if you have foreign currency. I speculate that this is because people find that they *must* obtain foreign currency, the internal currency being unspendable, and any method available to them for obtaining foreign currency is a criminal offense. A retreat from this system, usually by allowing the international currency to freely penetrate the internal economy, tends to be associated with a substantial reduction in the availability of young girls, as for example in Cuba recently. > This scenario is not entirely hypothetical. I have read that > Senator Patrick Leahy introduced Senate Bill #307 to create > such a split currency. Why am I not surprised that it was Senator Patrick Leahy of crypto bill fame? --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

2 1

Unsubscribing
by cybergod＠nfx.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How do I unscribe? Thank you ver much.. PGP Encrypted Messages Perfered: -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzJQQgQAAAEEAOqOH/P/h9xWHxUb0309CWY1094F+HE+/medDnYA8jNJ+I1m obwHXAiCtwRGy3skXVs3rjZDGMINZMcCSA4N+TCUMspvvB6qX8EwJMzRPduj2eHV vHlVYGr42kOb41UH37sFWAd1ppPXVyvV4qNfRG5+tnzoXLRFlOD0x6ZUXpDxAAUR tCNSdXNzZWxsIFMuIEFsYmVlIDxjeWJlcmdvZEBuZngubmV0Pg== =hNsw -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- PGP Encrypted Messages Perfered: -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzJQQgQAAAEEAOqOH/P/h9xWHxUb0309CWY1094F+HE+/medDnYA8jNJ+I1m obwHXAiCtwRGy3skXVs3rjZDGMINZMcCSA4N+TCUMspvvB6qX8EwJMzRPduj2eHV vHlVYGr42kOb41UH37sFWAd1ppPXVyvV4qNfRG5+tnzoXLRFlOD0x6ZUXpDxAAUR tCNSdXNzZWxsIFMuIEFsYmVlIDxjeWJlcmdvZEBuZngubmV0Pg== =hNsw -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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[NEWS] Crypto-relevant wire clippings
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

New York Times: Thursday, September 26, 1996 Potential Flaw Seen In Cash Card Security By John Markoff A potential security flaw has been discovered that might make it possible to counterfeit many types of the electronic-cash ``smart cards'' that are now widely used in Europe and are being tested in this country by banks and credit card companies - including Visa and Mastercard. The types of smart cards that are potentially at risk include the kinds already employed in the Mondex cash card system and others used by European consumers. A cash card from Visa International Inc. was demonstrated in a highly publicized trial at last summer's Olympic Games in Atlanta. Chase Manhattan Corp.; Citibank, a unit of Citicorp, Mastercard International Inc., and Visa plan a test this year with 50,000 customers in New York City. Touted as the key to the cashless society of the near future, smart cards are credit card-sized packets that contain a microprocessor chip and a small amount of computer memory for storing bits of electronic information that represent money. At businesses equipped with the computerized devices that accept smart-card payments, the cards are supposed to be as good as cash - and as vulnerable to theft or loss as a $100 bill. But the cards have been promoted as tamper-proof, which is why computer scientists at Bell Communications Research, one of the nation's leading information-technology laboratories, are now sounding the alarm, saying that a sophisticated criminal might be able to tweak a smart-card chip to make a counterfeit copy of the monetary value on a legitimate card. ``If you're deploying these smart-card devices in a business or government electronic-payment system, then I think you need to look carefully at their actual security,'' said Richard Lipton, chief scientist at Bell Communications and a professor of computer science at Princeton University. Lipton and two colleagues at Bell Communications Research - or Bellcore - are about to publish a research paper on the potential smart-card flaw, which they recently discovered through theoretical research on the technology. No smart-card counterfeiting has been discovered yet, but Lipton and his team believe that such crimes are inevitable unless the technology is redesigned. The researchers have also been quietly notifiying the seven regional Bell telephone companies that jointly own Bellcore about their discovery. Bell companies including US West, and long-distance companies, including AT&T Corp., have been planning to market smart cards as a secure way to pay for long-distance calls without entering credit card numbers or generating the audit-trail of a phone bill. Despite the Bellcore warning, not all executives at companies using smart cards consider the theoretical threat a real danger. ``This is very speculative,'' said Chris Jarman, vice president of chip card technology at Mastercard, who had seen a draft of the Bellcore research paper. ``I have yet to see a smart-card scheme with a vulnerability,'' Jarman said. And even some industry executives, who said it was conceivable that individual smart cards might be at risk, contended that the vulnerability was not a threat to smart-card technology in general - any more than the occasional passing of a counterfeit $20 bill undermines the U.S. currency system. ``This is a significant event but it doesn't blow the industry apart,'' said William Barr, vice president of the Smart Card Forum, a trade organization of 230 U.S. companies and government agencies. Still, Barr conceded, ``this approach offers some ability to mount attacks that have not been anticipated.'' The Bellcore researchers, however, consider the potential flaw significant because it could short-circuit the data-scrambling software contained in many types of smart cards. The software is used to protect the card's secret code, which is designed to prevent counterfeiting. In theory, at least, the Bellcore researchers said that a smart card's security could be breached by forcing the microchip in the card to make a calculation error. This could be done in a number of ways, the researchers said, whether through sophisticated means like bombarding the card with radiation or perhaps cruder methods like placing it in a microwave oven. Once the card can be forced to make even a small calculating error, the researchers said that a mathematical formula they derived could use this error to extrapolate the secret data that authenticates the card when it is inserted in a merchant's card reader. The researchers suggested that in any system where it was possible to know about a calculation error it might be possible to exploit this newly discovered vulnerability. The Bellcore team is conducting further research into this possibility. ``These systems tend to have a fragile behavior,'' said another of the researchers, Richard A. DeMillo, who is vice president for information technology at Bellcore. ``Our technique is like tiny lever that makes it possible to pry open the vault that the secret information is stored in.'' U. S. Banker: Thursday, September 26, 1996 Mondex gets Cold, Hard Cash By Joseph Radigan The $ 119 million that National Westminster Bank plc and Midland bank plc raised this summer to fund their Mondex smart card program should provide at least some the capital they'll need to increase its acceptance. The capital was raised in conjunction with Mondex's spinoff from the two British banks that created the program as a joint venture five years ago. The new setup is being called "Mondex International," and besides NatWest and midland, which now hold minority stakes, it includes 15 other shareholding banks. One of them is Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp., which like Midland is owned by HSBC Group of London. In the U.S., Wells Fargo & Co. and AT&T Corp.'s Universal Card Services Group paid a combined $ 46.5 million for their 30% stake. The other investors include major banks in Canada, australia and New Zealand. Another 23.5% remains to be sold for roughly $ 1.5 million for each 1% interest. Not all the new funds are going toward Mondex's future development. Some will be used to compensate NatWest for the costs it incurred in leading the original research and development. NatWest's Michael Keegan became Mondex's chief executive as part of the restructuring, replacing Tim Jones, a fellow NatWest executive who had been Mondex's CEO through its startup phase. Jones is returning to NatWest as the managing director for the London bank's electronic commerce group and will keep a seat on the card association's board. David Mills, who runs Midland Bank's retail banking business will stay on as chairman of Mondex International, but he also has a seat on the board of MasterCard's European affiliate, Europay. These two card associations, in conjunction with Visa, are backing a smart card program that rivals Mondex's. But Keegan says that this does not pose a conflict of interest. As in the American credit card business, where banks are free to issue both MasterCard and Visa, Keegan foresees a future in which Mondex members will issue both Mondex and Europay smart cards. Now that Mondex is in the process of collecting the financial fuel it will need to fund its growth, the smart card organization's future revenue will come mostly from annual dues paid by member banks, Keegan says. The per-transaction interchange fee that supplies MasterCard and Visa with most of their annual revenue is not practical for the low-value payments for which smart cards are intended. Imposing a transaction fee on these would make the system impractical. In addition, because Mondex attempts to electronically mimic currency, most transactions will not settle through a captive payments clearing system. The only settlement will take place on an end-of-day basis when merchants or customers redeem their Mondex value at their local banks. San Francisco Chronicle: Thursday, September 26, 1996 Hundreds of Companies Have Smart Card Systems By Laura Castaneda The smart money is on smart cards -- even though most consumers have yet to lay a finger on them. Valerie Baptiste is one exception. The Wells Fargo secretary is participating in a company experiment that lets her make purchases at 22 San Francisco shops with a smart card. Resembling credit cards, smart cards are embedded with computer chips. They can store cash and other data such as medical history and credit information. ''A big advantage is the convenience of not having to fumble around in my purse for cash,'' said Baptiste as she was buying juice at The Wildflower Cafe. Hundreds of companies besides Wells Fargo, including several in the Bay Area, have launched smart card pilot programs to try and cash in on the cashless society of the future. Getting merchants and customers to accept and use a new form of payment won't happen overnight. But experts believe the widespread acceptance of smart cards is inevitable. ''I'm confident that the push will be on to make it happen because there are so many powerful entities interested in seeing cash go away,'' said Bruce Brittain of Brittain Associates in Atlanta, a consumer behavior research firm. David Poe, a director of Edgar Dunn & Co. in San Francisco, a management consulting firm that specializes in new product development, agreed. ''I think (smart card use) is going to be evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary,'' he said. Entities that want to cut down on the use of cash include big banks, credit card issuers, universities and the U.S. government. Why? Smart cards can save the cost of collecting, counting, securing and transferring cash. Most pilot programs feature smart cards that simply store cash, usually up to $ 20. The amount of each purchase is electronically deducted from the card at the point-of-sale. These kinds of smart cards are ideal for smaller transactions like parking, lunches, dry cleaning, convenience stores, vending machines and fast food. However, smart card technology is almost limitless. Combining computer chips and magnetic stripes allows a single card to be used as a cash, credit, debit and ATM card. Among the pilot programs in place: * Bank of America and Visa International are experimenting with employee-only stored value smart cards for purchases from company cafeterias and vending machines and some outside merchants. * Ohio and Wyoming plan to start using smart cards for food stamp and nutrition programs, and the U.S. Department of Defense is testing a multiapplication smart card at military bases in Hawaii. * The Washington, D.C., transit system plans to implement smart card technology for fares, and the Metropolitan Transit Commission, which serves 25 Bay Area transit services, is also considering launching smart card technology in about two years. * The University of Michigan, Western Michigan University, Washington University, the University of Minnesota, the University of North Carolina, Florida University and the University of San Francisco have smart cards for on- and off-campus in cafeterias, bookstores and restaurants. Smart cards are already widely used overseas. In Germany, more than 80 million people have been issued smart cards containing health insurance information. The potential market is huge, with more than half a billion smart cards expected to be in use worldwide by the year 2000, according to the Smart Card Forum, a group dedicated to accelerating the widespread acceptance of smart cards. A Smart Card Forum poll found that almost two-thirds of respondents see smart cards as a convenient option for carrying important personal information, and 40 percent would prefer to use the cards instead of cash for everyday purchases. Another Smart Card Forum survey found that retailers see various benefits such as gathering customer information, offering loyalty or ''frequent shopper'' programs and electronic ticketing and couponing. Despite high expectations, smart cards have a long way to go before they become as popular as ATM cards. Critics of smart cards, worried about privacy issues, liken the card's ability to track a consumer's every purchase to Big Brother in George Orwell's novel ''1984.'' There is also the classic ''chicken and egg'' problem: Merchants don't want to spend the money for smart card equipment until they're in widespread use, while consumers don't want to use smart cards until more merchants accept them. ''It's going to be a tough sell for consumers,'' said Rob Palmer, owner of The Wildflower Cafe, which has participated in the Wells Fargo pilot program for about a year. ''Cash is very convenient.'' Palmer agreed to participate in the experiment because it was free. But he said it may not be worth paying for later because smart card business only accounts for about 2 percent of his transactions. It costs about $ 500 per unit for a point-of-service terminal capable of processing smart cards. It's unclear whether banks or merchants will ultimately foot the bill. Many new debit and credit card terminals are also incorporating smart-card capabilities. The Smart Card Forum estimates that it costs 80 cents to $ 15 to manufacture a card, depending on the size of the chip. Right now, banks and card issuers are paying for the cards. Eventually retailers could sell their own affinity cards. Today, some cards can only be used once, others can be reloaded with more cash. To be cost-effective, though, most people think they cards will have to be reloadable and have more than one use. To succeed, smart cards will have to offer clear benefits to merchants (such as loyalty programs that generate repeat business) and to consumers (such as discounts or special promotions). The cash-only cards do not have any security features, so if you lose one, it's easy for someone else to spend your money. Cards that also have personal information will need to have security features such as ''encryption,'' or electronic scrambling that protect against unauthorized use. In fact, a survey of the world's 10 largest central banks released earlier this month by a task force of computer and security experts found that security measures now used with electronic money are adequate to protect consumers from fraud. Companies are also starting to look at other smart card applications. Microsoft Corp. is working with several other companies to develop open standards that integrate smart cards with computers, so that you could transfer money from your checking account onto a smart card using your PC. The smart cards also could be used make purchases over the Internet. Many people are afraid to use credit cards to buy things over the Internet because they're afraid their account numbers will get stolen. Yesterday, Mondex International Ltd. and CyberCash, Inc. announced an agreement to produce smart cards that will let consumers purchase goods over the Internet and download and transfer funds. In 1998 Wells Fargo plans to roll out a multipurpose card made by Mondex that will let people transfer money from their accounts to smart cards via computer. Such smart card technology will be like ''having an ATM in your own home,'' said Janet Hartung Crane, senior vice president for Wells Fargo. American Banker: Thursday, September 26, 1996 Checkfree Sees On-Line Banking Tripling in 1997 By JENNIFER KINGSON BLOOM Peter J. Kight, chief executive officer of Checkfree Corp., makes two predictions about on-line banking. He says that 1996 will be remembered as the year banks learned the power of the technology, and that the number of consumers banking through electronic channels will more than triple in 1997. The statements carry more weight than they would have a year ago, because Mr. Kight's company has transformed itself into a formidable force in the interactive banking market. Once known primarily as a processor of electronic bill payments, Checkfree has acquired four companies this year, giving it a soup-to-nuts line of electronic banking products and services. Behind the acquisitions lies Mr. Kight's vision of banking's future. "Every major bank in the country will be in the market with an electronic banking product within the next 18 months," Mr. Kight said. "It's following exactly the same curve as credit cards." For Mr. Kight, these developments represent the culmination of 15 years of hard work. Just last week, Checkfree announced an agreement to acquire the processing subsidiary of Intuit Inc., which will give it access to the latter company's Quicken product, its customers, and bank partners. "This is what I paid my dues for," Mr. Kight said. "This is what we built the company to do." On Wednesday, Checkfree announced partnerships with BellSouth, Capstead Mortgage Co., and the Small Business Administration. The arrangements will let the companies and the agency collect bill payments electronically. Mr. Kight founded Columbus, Ohio-based Checkfree in 1981, when he was 24. The previous year, he was managing a chain of fitness centers in the Southwest. While pondering the best way to sell health club memberships, he hit upon the concept of automatic monthly payments. At the time, only a handful of companies -- most of them insurance providers -- were collecting payments electronically. By 1982, a year after he set up his electronic funds transfer service company, Mr. Kight was named an "entrepreneur of the year" by Ernst & Young. Last year, Checkfree went public. This year the company has acquired Servantis Systems Inc. in Atlanta; Interactive Services Corp. in Portland, Ore.; Security APL in Bloomfield, Ill.; and Intuit Services in Downers Grove, Ill. "Each step, if you look at it, has been one to strengthen our position and our strategic capabilities," Mr. Kight said. Checkfree has kept its headquarters in Ohio, but the acquisition of Servantis' campuslike setting in Atlanta has begged the question of whether the offices might move. Intuit Services employees will remain in Illinois, where the work force likely will expand. Mr. Kight, 40, divides his time between Atlanta and Columbus and said he will decide within a year whether to initiate a formal move. The union of Checkfree and Intuit Services is something of a remarriage. Checkfree was the original processor of payments emanating from Quicken software before Intuit Inc. acquired National Payment Clearinghouse Inc. National designed the banking connections for the rival Microsoft Money personal finance package, and the rechristened Intuit Services Corp. went on to handle the lion's share of payments for PC banking customers. "Essentially, Intuit enabled Checkfree to really prove the efficacy of electronic bill payment," Mr. Kight said of the early days. "If it hadn't been for Intuit and the link of Checkfree and Quicken, we wouldn't have gotten to the point where we could prove to the banks that this really does work. "Even though the banks didn't like the fact that we and Intuit did that without them, at the time, they weren't doing it. So what we did is we proved it, to get them to pay attention." What followed was a fairly messy divorce, in which Intuit withdrew its business from Checkfree, and Checkfree sued Intuit for patent infringement. Mr. Kight said he managed to stay friendly with key Intuit executives. He and Scott Cook, Intuit's founder and chairman, had "a great deal of mutual respect," he said. The relationships proved central to the recent acquisition. A telephone call at the beginning of this year from Mr. Kight to Intuit chief executive officer William V. Campbell started the ball rolling. Mr. Kight said a news article about technology companies jockeying for position in electronic commerce prompted him to pick up the phone. He said he told Mr. Campbell: "You've got stress at your bill payment service, but you're growing like crazy. I'm growing like crazy. You're signing up banks, I'm signing up even more banks. Maybe if we work together ... and he said, 'I think you're right.' And that started it." Mr. Kight said he and Mr. Cook agreed each company would do best to focus on its core competency: Checkfree on transaction processing, Intuit on its software. "Part of Intuit's strategy didn't work too well, which was signing up more banks" for its processing service, Mr. Kight said. "But part of its strategy worked extremely well -- the power of Quicken working with the banks." The acquisition will boost Checkfree's bank customers to 181, and the number of individuals for whom it processes transactions to 1.2 million. Seeing 1996 as a turning point, Mr. Kight said he hopes bankers will accelerate their moves into electronic banking now that they have easier access to Quicken. Until now, banks that wanted to be compatible with Quicken had to become customers of Intuit Services. Checkfree's main competitor today is Visa Interactive. Looming on the horizon is Integrion Financial Network, a partnership of 15 banks and IBM. "Right now, we're 100% supportive of Integrion, but to the extent that Integrion chooses to work in our business, we'll be very tough competitors," Mr. Kight said. Mr. Kight and numerous industry observers are still trying to make sense of Integrion. Phoebe Simpson, an electronic commerce analyst at Jupiter Communications in New York, said: "It's going to boil down to Checkfree and Visa Interactive in the long run. It's yet to be determined whether Integrion plans to build an entire payment processing unit." But David E. Weisman, who covers the same ground for Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said it will be a three-way race. He said "Checkfree's in good position here because they've got more volume" than Visa or Integrion. John A. Russell, chief spokesman for Integrion member Banc One Corp. in Columbus, Ohio, called the Intuit acquisition a "good move" for Checkfree -- of which Banc One is a longtime customer -- as well as a competitive boost. "It's key for Checkfree to do exactly what they're doing, and that's to get big quickly so they can realize the economies of scale in this manufacturing process," he said. Mr. Kight agreed that such economies of scale would serve his company well as on-line banking gains vogue. "I don't believe that the Internet is going to happen quite as fast as the Internet-focused people believe it's going to," Mr. Kight said. "I think there's going to be a trend toward banks providing more service to their customers (when they) can connect directly to the bank without the Web being involved. I think we're going to see that evolution over the next three or four years." But, Mr. Kight added, "I do believe that electronic banking is absolutely on a critical mass-adoption curve as we speak." Success and growth haven't changed Mr. Kight's down-to-business mentality. When asked how he celebrated last week's deal closing, Mr. Kight said, "By getting on a plane and flying to Chicago to meet with the ISC work force." --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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The John Doe rebellion
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have some direct insight as to how airlines interpret the new travel provisions and what they are reasonably able to accomplish in improving safety via identity and luggage checks. I was wondering if with gov't trying to compile dossiers on travellers it might be possible for a large enough percentage of frequent air travellers to assume the same identity (e.g., John or Jane Doe). If so, a service could be established to book airline reservations under a single credit card for Does so as to confound automated tracking systems. Eventually, Does could arrange to exchange IDs (if their ages and descriptions matched) and even credit cards (again assuming equivalence) to really monkey wrench things. -- Steve

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RE: POLL RESULTS
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Timothy C. May Interesting that Detweiler returned with a _Russian_ nym. ........................................................................ I don't think LD is Russian. I think he's actually an Asparagus. (bwahhahahhahahhah) .. Blanc

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[NEWS] Crypto-relevant wire clippings
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Money Daily: Tuesday, September 24, 1996 IBM, Bank Alliance May Speed Acceptance of Online Banking By Lloyd Chrein If one muscle-bound company is what it will take to turn online banking into a household word, then the recently- formed Integrion Financial Network, a conglomeration of IBM and 15 heavy-hitting U.S. and Canadian banks, may have the right formula, say analysts. In many ways Integrion appears a natural fit: the meeting of a major data-processing player -- IBM -- and institutions that will potentially need a lot of online data processed -- banks. The new company, a separate entity with its own CEO and board of directors, will offer the means for consumers to connect to their banks (via the IBM Global Network, the Internet or commercial online services) and will partner with developers of the necessary online banking software. It is expected to begin operating in early 1997. "If they can use the clout of all these big banks, plus IBM, to decrease the cost of providing online banking and ultimately lower costs and improve service for consumers, then they're going to coax more consumers into online banking," says Karen Epper, an analyst with Forrester Research. "The question is whether this big ship can move quickly enough to keep up with the changes in the online world and stay in the race." As things stand now, it seems like there is a lot of ground to be made up. A recent study by the San Francisco-based Odyssey L.P. found that just a handful of American households use the 'Net for banking -- just 1% of the 14% of U.S. households with access to an online service. "Online banking is confined to a small minority of a small minority," said Nicholas Donatiello president of Odyssey. "But I think it has the potential to be bigger." Members of Integrion, however, took issue with the Odyssey report. "Those numbers don't seem right," said David Fortney, in charge of access and payment strategies for the Charlotte based NationsBank. "But we do agree that there are not a lot of people banking online. We see that as a huge opportunity. We think there is a lot of pent-up demand." A Barnett Bank spokeswoman said that 25% of the bank's current customers use the telephone for home banking, an indicator that online banking through Integrion -- which should be more convenient -- will also be a hit. "We will see an explosion in this area," she predicted. The problem with online banking as it exists now, say Integrion members, is that each bank offers different levels of service, uses different software, and has to bear the full cost of designing and managing its online system. With Integrion, they note, banks will be able to take advantage of economies of scale, ultimately offering consumers a wider choice of software programs and means of accessing their accounts than if they went it alone. "What we hope to do is speed the pace at which electronic banking services will reach the consumer," says Chuck Hieronymi, senior vice president of marketing at NationsBank. "We also hope to speed the rate at which banks will adopt online banking. We hope to attract as many banks to join as possible." The company intends to eventually allow consumers to use most of the major personal finance software, including Microsoft Money and Intuit's Quicken, as well as Internet browsers like Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer and online services Prodigy, America Online and CompuServe. While Integrion hasn't formed any alliances with developers or online services so far, potential partners are warm to the concept. "We fully expect our products and technology will be a part of this," says Matt Cone, business development manager for Microsoft, who notes that there are also potential uses for Windows NT and BackOffice. To attract all the major players under one roof, Integrion needs to be big. And it is: the 15 member banks comprise over half the retail banking population in North America -- more than 60 million households. Member banks are: ABN AMRO, BANC ONE, Bank of America, Barnett Bank, Comerica, First Bank Systems, First Chicago NBD, Fleet Financial Group, KeyCorp , Mellon Bank, Michigan National Bank, NationsBank, PNC Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, and Washington Mutual, Inc. Of course, there is competition, mainly from data processing companies such as CheckFree and Visa Interactive -- IBM will perform their functions for Integrion member banks. Yet according to Epper, even the competitors are potential partners in cyberspace. "CheckFree will compete for the same bill payment system contracts as Integrion, but it will also work with Integrion to support bill payment systems," says Epper. "In the online world, companies that are competitors are also working together. That has been the paradigm for a long time." To have any effect on improving online banking's numbers, Integrion will have to stay on the cutting edge, reacting quickly to rapid changes in security, authentication and other technological advancements. Hieronymi claims that the company will be able to make quick decisions and won't be weighed down by the girth of its many members. But Epper has her doubts. "This company has been speculated about for two years and in serious discussion for the past year," she says. "At the rate at which online banking is moving, if they take that long to make decisions they are likely to lose a real advantage. As it is, they're already a little late to the party." For more Web-formation, visit: http://www.checkfree.comfor CheckFree http://www.forrester.com for Forrester Research http://www.ibm.com for IBM http://www.intuit.com for Intuit http://www.nationsbank.com for NationsBank Computerworld: September 23, 1996 Can Banks Survive the Online Onslaught? By Ralph Soucie Recently, Hugh McColl, chairman of NationsBank, admitted to The Wall Street Journal that he is scared of what technology might do to his business. That isn't something you'd expect from the architect of a $ 192 billion banking powerhouse. Clearly, though, trouble lies ahead for banks. The endgame of the recent bank merger wave looks pretty bleak. Eventually, some eight to 12 banking behemoths will blanket the country. These giants will look, act and smell the same to consumers. Absent some sort of blockbuster development, the entire industry seems headed for the same fate suffered recently by the large retailers. But that blockbuster development is inevitable, and it surely will be driven by information technology. Technology at least the leading-edge stuff that creates monster opportunities isn't most banking executives' major stock-in-trade, so they don't even know where their future competitors are going to come from. To be sure, banks are trying some new tricks as they scrounge for growth. Some, for instance, are using automated teller machines to dispense coupons and sell event tickets. Not a bad idea, but it still doesn't solve the core problem. Electronic home banking software seems a better fit, but so far, it has generated me-too products and little profit. Meanwhile, bankers' favorite retail customers cash-rich individuals with low transaction activity are a threatened species. Taking money from these customers and lending it to free-spending Baby Boomers is really the heart of retail banking nowadays. But families who inherit such liquid assets from their parents are likely to apply much of this loot to debt reduction. The problem is that consumers don't perceive high value in generic banking services, and with good reason. As surely as you're reading this, within a generation we'll be carrying our financial assets around on some form of smart card. You'll deal with your depository bank much as you interact with the bank that issues your credit card. But the irony is that all this doesn't have to be the death knell for the banking industry. Banking executives simply need to worry less about high-tech rivals and more about the value they add to customer services. Take the lowly bank statement, for example. What if a bank offered small businesses the option of receiving their bank statements in electronic form, say, as an Excel spreadsheet file? Why not provide a listing of canceled checks for the entire fiscal year? The owner could then take this disk file, along with his check register, to his accountant. The accountant would then add data such as payee name and the date the check was written. For a small business that writes 100 checks per month, this could save a few hundred dollars in fees. That's a bank service that packs a punch, yet the incremental cost to the bank of providing the service would be very small. Numerous variations are possible. For instance, nonbusiness bank customers might find it useful to flag tax-deductible payments by putting an X in a box when they write the check. The bank can then provide a year-end listing of tax deductions a great headache-buster at tax time. It doesn't take advanced technology to deliver services such as these. What it takes is customer-oriented thinking, combined with simple awareness of how technology can support a new value proposition. So, while bankers should heed Andy Grove's "paranoia is good" message, they should worry less about technology threats and more about an industry culture that's rooted in an assumption of entitlement. Money Daily: Thursday, September 19, 1996 Privacy Storm Shows the Best and Worst of the 'Net By Michael Brush The flap over a new service from Lexis-Nexis is probably misguided, but raises interesting questions about privacy and the power of online communication. An online brouhaha that broke out this week over alleged privacy breaches caused by a new Lexis-Nexis product has put both the best and worst of the 'Net community in high profile. The Dayton, Ohio-based online database company has been swamped with phone calls and faxes this week because of a flurry of e-mails and news-group postings warning readers of the allegedly dire consequences of its new product called P- TRAK. Many of the warnings falsely claim that P-TRAK provides a wide range of potentially sensitive personal information ranging from social security numbers to medical and credit histories. On the bright side, the controversy shows the huge power of the 'Net when used by public-spirited advocates to mobilize a response to a perceived danger -- in this case, a threat to privacy. On the dark side, the fact that many of the allegations in the electronic correspondence are plain wrong shows how easy it is to spread misinformation and, potentially, raise what could amount to an online lynch mob. At issue is a product launched last June which provides Nexis-Lexis clients with basic public information about anyone in a 300 million-name database. The information available is culled from credit bureau records. It is limited to your name, your maiden name or alias (if any), your current and two most recent past addresses, the month and year of your birth, and your phone number -- though not all of that information is available on every person. For nine days after the product was released last June 2, P- TRAK also included your social security number. But the SSNs were pulled on June 11 because of complaints, says Lexis- Nexis spokesman Steve Edwards. If you already know someone's social security number, though, you can search for him or her using that number. P-TRAK is meant to help attorneys track down witnesses, heirs or parents who have stopped paying child support, says Edwards. While the scope of P-TRAK is relatively limited compared to, say, credit reports, which carry news of your payment history, bankruptcies and other such sensitive material, it nonetheless sparked the ire of many 'Net users. For example, one posting that was later widely circulated this week claimed that your social security number, "mother's maiden name, birth date and other personal information are now available to anyone with a credit card." It postulated that the information could allow someone to commit credit card fraud or use your identity. The truth is somewhat tamer. The SSN and mother's maiden name are not included, for example, and the database is available only to clients like law firms and news organizations that can afford Lexis-Nexis's relatively hefty fees. Furthermore, Money Daily's spot check shows that the information available is spotty at best. A search of P-TRAK run on our behalf by the Time Inc. Research Center turned up the right addresses but no phone or birth date for this author. It got the addresses and birth year correct for Money Daily editor Kevin McKean, but had an obsolete phone number. And when confronted with relatively more common names of two other Money Online staffers -- tech director Wilson Smith and reporter Joseph "Tripp" Reynolds -- turned up dozens of people, none of whom proved to be the correct ones. Those limitations notwithstanding, the roar on the 'Net was heard at Lexis-Nexis headquarters. "We have been deluged with people calling, writing and faxing," says Edwards. "People are asking us: 'Why are you putting my medical records, my mother's maiden name, and my credit card history out there?' This has been testing the limits of our customer service." In response, Lexis-Nexis posted a statement on its home page to correct false information about the product and also a form you can use to remove your name from the list, something the company says people could have done all along by calling. By next Monday, Edwards says the firm will also have an 800 number that callers can use. People who phone the company's current 800 number are told to fax name-removal requests to 513-865-1930. The company has stopped short of posting responses in news groups or bulletin boards, though. "There are different schools of thought on that," says Edwards. "One says that you should never respond to news groups from a company standpoint because that increases the amount of flaming. But at this point, I don't know how much worse it could get." In the company's place, other news group participants have stepped in to set the record straight. "I think you owe a post to correct this error," one such correspondent scolded in a reply that pointed out several errors in the message quoted above. Ironically, the information available in P-TRAK is mild compared to what is available elsewhere in the vast Lexis- Nexis database. A related product, called P-FIND, for example, offers additional household information like the appraised value of a home in many states and the number of dependents (both of which are public information). The main Nexis database digs up information from news stories -- often from local papers -- published around the world and in several different languages. Many of those stories, of course, contain information of arrests and charges that may later prove groundless, as well as a volume of personal information about the people cited in the articles. And the legal Lexis service contains not only details from civil and criminal court cases around the nation, but also other potentially sensitive information, such as tax liens and judgments against individuals. Before you get your hackles up over invasion of privacy, though, consider that all of the above is public information -- and, of course, much of it is potentially more sensitive than your previous address. For more Web-formation, visit: Lexis-Nexis (http://www.lexis-nexis.com ) Lexis-Nexis statement ( http://www.lexis-nexis.com/lncc/p-trak/index.html) Form to remove your name from the Lexis-Nexus database (http://www.lexis-nexis.com/lncc/about/ptrak.html) Reuters: Friday, September 20, 1996 Summers: Electronic Cash Won't Affect Economy Much The advent of electronic money is not expected to have any major macroeconomic effect in the medium term, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on Friday. "I do not anticipate in the near and medium term significant macro-economic effects," Summers told reporters following a speech to a conference on electronic money sponsored by the Treasury Department. Some analysts have speculated that the Federal Reserve's ability to conduct monetary policy may be undermined by the issuance of electronic money over the Internet or elsewhere. Others have suggested that the Fed and Treasury could lose profits from seigniorage -- the income earned by currency issuers because currency pays no interest to holders. Summers though played down both those concerns. He noted that much U.S. currency is held abroad and said electronic money is unlikely to substitute for that anytime soon. As for monetary policy, it already works indirectly through open market operations, he noted. "As we move from credit cards to debit cards to stored value cards, I think the Fed will continue to have the ability, by operating in the government securities market, to have a substantial influence on the level of interest rates," Summers said. He saw macroeconomic benefits to be gained from the advent of electronic money and stored value. If, like credit cards, they make it easier for consumers to purchase goods during economic downturns, then they can act as a stabilizing force on consumption. "To the extent that these technologies and the Internet make markets more competitive, they will tend to ... be a force against inflation," he added. Reuters: Wednesday, September 18, 1996 Germany to Let Only Banks Issue E-Cash By Catherine O'Mahony Bundesbank council member Franz-Christoph Zeitler on Wednesday welcomed government plans to give only banks the right to issue pre-paid cards or so-called electronic purses. Stressing the German central bank's concern about electronic money, he said banks were the safest guardians of electronic cash systems since they had to meet legally-imposed liquidity restrictions and had long experience of cashless payments. Zeitler said in a statement that electronic money innovations were fundamentally positive as a way to speed up transfers. But "it is also important that the security of payment transfers and currency stability do not get left behind," he added. Electronic purses are plastic cards with an inbuilt micro-chip which stores the electronic cash value of users' accounts and can be reloaded at special machines. The proposal to restrict such projects to banks is part of a new German banking law which is still under preparation but which is expected to be enforced in 1997. Zeitler said issuers of electronic cash had to be extremely reliable because a sudden collapse of an electronic cash system, due to forgery or technical failure, could have "significant negative" consequences for the economy. While electronic purses, also known as smart cards, are not yet available in cash-dominated Germany, tests are being run on several projects. Current projects being tested in the Munich region include a card to pay for telephone calls and local train tickets and another with broader application, which can be used for small purchases up to 50 marks ($ 33.03). Worldwide, the most prominent electronic purse project is Mondex which was developed in Britain by National Westminster Bank and is on trial in the town of Swindon. Zeitler said it was likely that Bonn would also restrict the rights to create and maintain of Internet-based electronic cash systems to the banking industry. Internet banking is slowly gaining credence in Germany. Bavaria's Bayerische Hypotheken und Wechsel Bank recently launched a securities account accessible via the Internet. ($ 1=1.5138 Mark) American Banker: Thursday, September 19, 1996 Seeking Security, Banks Turn to Internet Certification By DREW CLARK On the Internet, no one can tell if you're a dog. This line, from a New Yorker cartoon, belies a serious problem for banks and merchants setting up sites on the World Wide Web: There is no widely accepted method for authenticating the claims -- or the identity -- of those conducting business on-line. To help solve this problem, two companies have begun certifying businesses by granting them "seals of approval" on the Web. "There needs to be some way that consumers can easily recognize when a site is secure and when it is not secure," said Michael S. Karlin, president of the Security First Network Bank. "Consumers are afraid, even in an FDIC-approved banking situation, and they want the feeling that it is secure." One of the first systems to offer authentication for commercial sites on the World Wide Web is TrueSite, developed by Application Programming and Development Inc. of Camp Springs, Md. BankAmerica Corp., Mellon Bank Corp., and First Bank System Inc. are among 30 financial institutions and 2,000 businesses whose Web sites have been certified. Though the Web provides businesses with a flexible, highly visible medium for presenting their message, on-line business has its drawbacks. A Web site user can download the entire contents of a Web page, alter it, and establish a dummy site at a new location. TrueSite guards against such occurrences by letting certified banks and businesses put a blue check mark symbol on their home pages for an annual fee of $495, which has been waived for six months. Users clicking on the logo will be warned if it has been fraudulently copied. "A user won't have to ask, 'Did I get to the correct site in the first place?,'" said Mark Burnett, president of Application Programming, which has annual revenues of $2 million. "Whether consumers feel comfortable engaging in transactions on the Internet is a function of how they feel," added Jack Rogers, president of the Fairfax, Va.-based American Finance & Investment Corp. "Their perception is as important as reality." Another certification was launched in July by the National Computer Security Association in Carlisle, Pa. The association requires that certified companies protect their Web sites against Internet attacks by using data encryption, by maintaining detailed logs, and by establishing firewalls within the computers that host Web sites. "You better have some confidence that a hacker doesn't have access to checking accounts," said Kevin J. Stevens, a product manager at the for- profit association, which has annual revenues of $5 million. "If banks don't take the steps to be certified and give their market some indication that they have instituted a security program, no public relations is going to resolve only one slip-up." So far six companies have each paid upwards of $8,500 for a detailed on- site audit before getting the association's stamp of approval. Mr. Stevens declined to identify them, but said they include one of the big three auto companies. "This is a great first step. What the NCSA has done is to put the bar up," said Security First's Mr. Karlin. He anticipates that the virtual bank will be certified within two months and hopes that the association will eventually introduce a system with several passing grades. America Online Inc. and the Better Business Bureau are also getting into the certification business. In conjunction with America Online's move to the New York Stock Exchange from Nasdaq, its top officials reemphasized the features of the largest on-line service and announced 10 new criteria that merchants will be required to meet. The standards include processing orders and responding to E-mails within one day of receipt and giving on-line customers equal priority with telephone customers. "AOL members will come to know and have confidence in people who display the seal of approval," said Michael J. Minigan, the service's vice president of interactive marketing. "It is our hope that at some point, merchants doing business on the Web would want to have the AOL seal on their Web sites." Officials at the Better Business Bureau promote self-regulation and full disclosure of company complaints to fill cues missing from on-line commerce. "For $30 a month, a business can design a fabulous Web page that can lead a consumer to think they are a Fortune 500 company," said spokeswoman Holly Cheriko. "The consumer is left without the cues in the traditional marketplace like being able to visit, talk to the sales clerk, and view the quality of the marketplace. They need a trusted means to determine which businesses are reliable and what commitment they have made to the consumer." --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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