-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I've just finished perusing the Office of Technology Assessment's "Information Technology for Control of Money Laundering" <ftp://otabbs.ota.gov/pub/pdf/money.laundering/*.pdf>. It's an informative and fascinating document for anyone interested in the issues of money laundering and its implications for the future of digital currency, as well as its increasing role as an important rationale in promoting government surveillance agendas. Broken into seven chapters, this document provides a valuable overview of the subject from the government's perspective. 1. "Electronic Money Laundering" covers the ABCs of money laundering and its connection to drug trafficking, terrorism and the global underground economy. It traces the relevant statutory history from the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970 onward. 2. "Mechanisms of Wire Transfer" examines the basics of wire transfers and the details of the FEDWIRE, CHIPS and SWIFT systems. 3. "Money Laundering and Law Enforcement" examines the laws and regulations involved and the various Federal and State Agency roles and responsibilities. 4. "Technologies for Detecting Money Laundering" is particularly interesting. It discusses the FinCEN Artificial Intelligence System (FAIS), and AI approaches including Expert Systems, Link Analysis, Neural Network techniques, Machine Learning and various statistical modeling methods. 5. "Privacy and Confidentiality" covers different investigative prerogatives, the legal history and case law of privacy jurisprudence, aspects of individual and corporate confidentiality, etc... 6. "International Issues" explores off-shore banking, international law enforcement efforts like the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and the subject of bilateral and multilateral cooperative agreements and conventions. 7. "Conclusions and Policy Options" discusses money laundering and the world economy, and various policy directions for the future as well as the type of monitoring regimes that might be established. It pays particular attention to the subject of the future impact of digital money, observing: "As alternative modes of electronic payment, e.g., "digital cash", develop, whatever precedents are set for access to wire transfers might also be applied to these alternatives. If not, digital cash, or "the electronic purse" may provide another channel for dirty money, so that monitoring of wire transfers will no longer be effective." I noticed that major network news reports on the "growing threat" of money laundering were particularly evident in close temporal conjunction to the wide public coverage of the latest FBI CALEA revelations. Just coincidence, I guess... Bonus: While your there you might want to (if you haven't yet) pick up another OTA document entitled "Electronic Surveillance in a Digital Age" which provides some useful additional government position tracking data on the legal and technical aspects of CALEA. It's available in both text <ftp://otabbs.ota.gov/pub/elec.surveil/*.txt> and PDF <ftp://otabbs.ota.gov/pub/pdf/elec.surveil/*.pdf> formats. - -Michael -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMMidCtGJlWF+GPx9AQGROQP+KtumqozBLlFgupOCcoKRIk6udFz0jRt4 Vt1y1noiV0tJCE2XQdEGiU7KhRHDC8QX+Zi1wxVqnlhxNI8hF5g4nDGf+DHyw54r KsXce7fJvPVZ3dn69dYIQ70gpa6BfAvsFXGAP9gnL3RxnxxYGfBknp2xdz0SiBQv t0bnWwIab68= =bWRK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----