Re: Attention Shoppers: Internet Is Open (NYT, 12Aug94)

[Jim Hart <hart@chaos.bsu.edu>]

> New York Times, 12 August 1994, Page C1.

All in all a good article.  I have a couple problems with it,
which may be due more to the people interviewed than to the
reporter:

* First, the credit card means that the vendor and bank can
both record the details of the transaction, and sell those
records on the open market.  This is hardly "total privacy".
The only thing PGP is doing here is protecting the credit
card number.  In fact, Internet commerce has the potential
to greatly reduce our privacy, via collection and dissemination
of transaction dossiers.  This is already happening on Prodigy
and Compuserve, for example.

+ Phil Zimmerman is correct to note that digital cash would
be a more important development, but he doesn't describe 
digital cash very well.  He says the features of untraceability, 
etc. aren't part of the dollars we use now, but in fact these 
features do exist in the physical coins and bills that have been
the most commonly used form of money for millenia.  The role 
of true digital cash protocols (beware of pretenders like 
"Netcash" that don't keep the privacy feature) is to bring 
these features of bills and coins to cyberspace, in place
of the new, Orwellian system of identified credit and debit
cards that has reared its ugly head during this ugly century.

Jim Hart
chaos.bsu.edu