US Govt. recent involvement in digital money & dig. signature issues
[Excerpted from Edupage.] ALL EYES ON E-MONEY Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin has formed a task force to examine what impact the move toward electronic money transfer and storage technologies will have on consumers. Specifically, the team will look at how these technologies will affect lower-income Americans, and assess standards for consumer protection. The task force also will come up with non-regulatory measures that can be taken to protect consumers while allowing the market to develop. "I want to be certain that we make the right decisions as we begin this new era so that the benefits of these developments are broadly shared and have a positive impact on our economy," says Rubin. (Investor's Business Daily 20 Sep 96 A19) Meanwhile, the Bank of Japan and Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. have jointly developed a very advanced, secure electronic money system, using NTT's high-speed digital signature system and its patented E-sign algorithm. The new system allows a number of banks to issue the same type of e-money to customers, relieving them of the responsibility of developing their own proprietary e-money systems. NTT hopes its new system will become the de facto standard for e-money in the country. (BNA Daily Report for Executives 13 Sep 96 A2) [...] POSTAL SERVICE TESTS ELECTRONIC POSTMARK The U.S. Postal Service is testing a system that would place an electronic postmark on e-mail messages, verifying the date and time the message was sent, and guaranteeing that the content had not been tampered with. The new system would enable more business functions to be conducted electronically, and would also provide an archive service, maintaining copies of "e-postmarked" mail, should any questions arise later. The current test will determine what price people would expect to pay for such a service, and which features work best. (St. Petersburg Times 20 Sep 96 E6) -- <HTML><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/~mech/"> Stanton McCandlish </A><HR><A HREF="mailto:mech@eff.org"> mech@eff.org </A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/"> Electronic Frontier Foundation </A><P> Online Activist </HTML>
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Stanton McCandlish