From: David Neal <dneal@usis.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 95 10:43:21 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: A recent article on Electronic Commerce
Message-ID: <Pine.BSI.3.91.950905121250.3370A-100000@usis.com>
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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