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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:[email protected]"> [email protected]
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/"> Electronic Frontier Foundation
</A><P><A HREF="http://www.eff.org/A"> Online Activist </A></HTML>