In the August 28, 1995 issue of Communications Week, the editor Mitch Irsfield briefly discusses electronic checking, and the joint venture between Sun, BBN, IBM, et al. He also references an article explaining the venture on Page 5 of the same issue. I dropped him a quick note thanking him for writing a non-hysterical article on cryptography, and also briefly mentioned that some of us would prefer electronic cash to electronic checking. Since part of being a cypherpunk is political, I'd like to encourage everyone to write a quick e-mail which expresses your own views to Mr. Irsfield (678-7017@mcimail.com). Speaking of talking to the 'public' about crypto-cash, we really need a meme of our own. Just as The Other Side invokes the specters of terrorism and child pornography, we need something like 'traceable transactions', 'government approved checking', 'uncle sam's clearing house', or 'irs approved bill payments.' Obviously the creative types on the list can come up with much better. But, I digress. The Page 5 article doesn't go into much detail, but says in essence that the system is an api layer and a smart card. In the cases of larger corporations, they may require a seperate processor. This says 'encryption in hardware' to me. Gee, wonder if someone found a use for all those useless tessera cards after all? :-) David Neal <dneal@usis.com> - GNU Planet Aerospace 1-800-PLN-8-GNU Unix, Sybase and Networking consultant. "...you have a personal responsibility to be pro-active in the defense of your own civil liberties." - S. McCandlish