(note trimmed distribution ... cryptography certainly isn't appropriate for any of this, and I doubt if dcsb is...) Kawika Daguio said:

I would prefer that folks kept us out of their fields of fire in the various > skirmishes occuring during the cryptocrusades and left us to manage the policy for and the security of our space for ourselves and our customers.

Banks and other financial intermediaries do not exist in a vacuum. While I agree that the banking/financial applications do drive the policy in this field (I believe both you and Bob believe this), I do not agree that the existing banks and financial intermediaries drive the policy. Fundamentally, there are some changes which make old institutions irrelevant, even if their functions are taken over by new institutions. For a long time, the Church handled intermediation between military powers. Now, it's the UN. Perhaps tomorrow, it will be the mutual fund managers, transnationals, and news agencies. We all seem to agree that the government is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. While I may be presuming incorrectly, I feel that the ABA represents the accidental existing institutions, not the essence of financial institutions. Thus, when you say you have spent 5 years negotiating and lobbying, I presume you are doing so to allow the existing institutions to fit into the new future. You are not necessarily helping the new future come into being in the essential sense by helping existing institutions come to grips with essential reality. I would argue that the reality of electronic commerce/cryptography, and its effect upon the power relationship of individual vs. group, needs no apologists, and indeed, no apologist can help it. It is a fundamentally new reality.