Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)
On Fri, Jul 25, 2003 at 08:40:33AM -0700, Steve Schear wrote: time for such pipe dreams. Now that many are un- or under-employed there still doesn't seem to be any activity by those active on this list in this critical infrastructure area. All the recent work that is being done (e.g., Orlin Grabbe's ALTA/DMT http://orlingrabbe.com/redirect.htm, Patrick McCuller's Lucrative http://lucrative.thirdhost.com, YodelBank http://yodelbank.com/, InvisibelNet http://invisiblenet.net) has been undertaken by real cypherpunks, a few monitor this list but rarely if ever That's a useful roundup, thanks. I think the cypherpunk goal of anonymity is still alive and well -- it's just that the folks involved in efforts like Freenet don't necessary consider themselves cypherpunks or subscribe to this list. Defcon featured a good number of anon projects; most dealing with publishing/web browsing/email than anon digital cash, unfortunately (though the interest is there). -Declan
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
Tim May wrote: Some lurker unwilling to comment on the public list sent me this. I didn't notice it wasn't intended for the list until I had already written a reply and was preparing to send it. So I have altered the name. 'Twas meant for the list, I just hit reply instead of reply all without looking. @lne.com and @minder.net don't set a Reply-To: header, but @einstein.ssz.com does. I don't get any mail from other nodes, if there are any. So some list mail needs a reply to get to the list, and some needs a reply to. Personally I prefer to hit reply, ie with a Reply-To: header set to the list (confusing, eg!). That way, if I want to reply to the list (which is my default preference) then the sender of the mail I'm replying to doesn't get two copies. But then I use OE... Perhaps @lne.com and @minder.net could do this? Or, if people prefer, @einstein.ssz.com could stop setting the Reply-To: header? Or would having all the nodes do it the same way be too conventional for cypherpunks... -- Peter Fairbrother
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
At 2:15 PM +0100 7/26/03, Peter Fairbrother wrote: Personally I prefer to hit reply, ie with a Reply-To: header set to the list (confusing, eg!). That way, if I want to reply to the list (which is my default preference) then the sender of the mail I'm replying to doesn't get two copies. But then I use OE... Since the toad days, cypherpunks has been reply to sender... Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 07:12 PM, Steve Furlong wrote: On Thursday 24 July 2003 15:50, Tim May wrote: In fact, digicash strongly suggests David Chaum's Digicash, That assumes the reader or listener has heard of Digicash, or of Chaum. Not an assumption I'd be comfortable making. Agreed, making the assumption that readers here have heard of Chaum or understand the basic idea of blinded transactions (or dining cryptographers, or oblivious transfer, or any of the other building blocks) is no longer warranted. I expect many of the persyns of peircing now spewing on the list are, like, thinking that's, like, _so_ nineties. As for thinking very general readers or listeners, those not even on the list, are capable of understanding Chaum or Digicash, that's a fool's errand. The average nontechnical person knows nothing about how crypto works, and attempting to explain a DC-Net or a blinded transfer is no more useful to them than just telling them the currency is based on magic beans. The point is not that laymen need to understand Digicash, but that calling things like ATM cards and Visa cards digicash does a disservice to the important ideas of why Chaum's and Brands' and similar systems worked. Hey, maybe it's actually the case that some of the people here who are referring to electronic debit cards as digicash just don't have a clue about what blinding is and why it makes for truly untraceable tokens. I tend to use electronic money when discussing coin- or account-based systems, anonymous or not, with the unwashed masses. It conveys the meaning well enough to serve as an opening wedge to a better description, and it's general enough that it shouldn't offend the sensibilities of those few people who do understand the subject in depth. And it hasn't been gobbled up by any company, so far as I know. I stopped any efforts to explain the true importance of electronic/digital money/cash a long time ago. A waste of time. Not too surprising, as getting even the basic idea requires some passing familiarity with things like how RSA works. When I read Chaum's 1985 CACM paper I already knew about RSA and hard directions for problems (trapdoor functions), and yet I still had to read and reread the paper and draw little pictures for myself. Thinking someone can absorb the gist via a purely verbal description is just not plausible. I have seen David Chaum attempt to do this with an audience of computer professionalsmy impression from the later questions from the audience is that his explanation simply didn't get them over the hump to the stage of realizing the key concept. No more so than popularizations of relativity actually ever got the masses to understand relativity. There is much that could be said about whether this difficulty is why we don't have untraceable, Chaum-style forms of money (I don't think this is the reason). Regardless, wishing won't make it so, and so wishing that people would grok the importance of blinding without having spent at least a few hours brushing up on RSA and exponentiation and all that and then following an explanation very, very closelywell, wishing won't make it so. So it's best to ignore the unwashed masses and their inability to understand untraceable money. More troubling is that so many _here_ don't seem to get it. --Tim May
Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)
Oh, like Uday and Qusay, you can't kill this immortal fucker, nobody got the guts to plow a TOW in it. Instead, thousands of gutless have hari-kiried by exiting the battle for well.com nutlick where the dead live in perfect, silent synchrony, so that is a no-brain, no-work option. Sit still, children, repeat this. Hell, start a DOA mail list to bitch about how stupid people are outside of old folks cess-suck. Read yourself sitting on a one-holer. Nothing wrong with cypherpunks that couldn't be cured, as ever, by more fresh young meat totally ignorant and not giving a shit about how it used to be, only hot to throw slop at what's puked by the wizened, the reputable, the stuffed with here's how it's meant to be. Now that revulsion against whoever has truth by tail is a dim memory of what cpunks was meant to be, was now and again, not a place for boozy glory days telling a sanitized tale of what never happened. Pontificators are usually hooted off the list, save for a few protected species taxidermied for darts. The old days, don't believe them, cypherpunks was and is toxic to serious makeovers and shutdowns and lock-outs, and, never forget that PLONKS are cries of shut the fuck up and listen to me. Pluck the PLONKS, if you don't get them you aint earning your stay. PLONKERS little-man your wee-wees. Hiccups a fogey one hand hanging on the bar rail, the other rooting the floor vomit for a chawtabaccy cud ricochet from the spit bucket. ]=; Uday
Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)
On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, John Young wrote: The old days, don't believe them, cypherpunks was and is toxic to serious makeovers and shutdowns and lock-outs, and, never forget that PLONKS are cries of shut the fuck up and listen to me. Pluck the PLONKS, if you don't get them you aint earning your stay. PLONKERS little-man your wee-wees. Hiccups a fogey one hand hanging on the bar rail, the other rooting the floor vomit for a chawtabaccy cud ricochet from the spit bucket. Right on dude! Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)
On Friday 25 July 2003 11:40, Steve Schear wrote: ... Now that many are un- or under-employed there still doesn't seem to be any activity by those active on this list in this critical infrastructure area. Speaking only for myself, I'm making a lot less than I was a couple of years ago. In the wake of the dot-bomb, I'm working a lot more hours just to keep my bills paid. I no longer have much time or creativity left for non-paying tasks. -- Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all! -- Rep. Henry Waxman
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
Some lurker unwilling to comment on the public list sent me this. I didn't notice it wasn't intended for the list until I had already written a reply and was preparing to send it. So I have altered the name. --Tim On Friday, July 25, 2003, at 01:07 PM, SOMEONE wrote: Tim May wrote: On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 07:12 PM, Steve Furlong wrote: On Thursday 24 July 2003 15:50, Tim May wrote: In fact, digicash strongly suggests David Chaum's Digicash, That assumes the reader or listener has heard of Digicash, or of Chaum. Not an assumption I'd be comfortable making. Readers on the cypherpunks list? They should be able to understand it, or at least they should have heard of it. They may have _heard_ of it, but to most of them (I t hink) it's just some magical incantations which they don't quite believe anyway. I stopped any efforts to explain the true importance of electronic/digital money/cash a long time ago. A waste of time. Not too surprising, as getting even the basic idea requires some passing familiarity with things like how RSA works. When I read Chaum's 1985 CACM paper I already knew about RSA and hard directions for problems (trapdoor functions), and yet I still had to read and reread the paper and draw little pictures for myself. That's a shame. The 1985 paper isn't on-line afaik, and I've only read second-hand versions. First, my stopped any efforts...a long time ago was a comment directed at what the OP was talking about: explaining digital money to the masses. For example, at parties or other meatspace gatherings. Online explanations--here, for example--are another matter. Second, the many online explanations from the CP list, circa 1992-94, are readily findable. Let me go check(20 seconds pass...)...yep, I just found hundreds of summary articles from various authors, including myself, Eric Hughes, Hal Finney, Doug Barnes, Ian Goldberg, and many others. There is no shortage of explanations of this stuff. In one of my articles, in fact, I make the same point about how the various boring versions of electronic money are not very important: The focus here is on true, untraceable digital cash, offering both payer and payee untraceability (anonymity). Mundane digital money, exemplified by on-line banking, ATM cards, smartcards, etc., is not interesting or important for CFP purposes. Payer-untraceable (but payee-traceable) digital cash can also be interesting, but not nearly as interesting and important as fully untraceable digital cash. There are many articles on why this is so. But, frankly, anyone who cannot see this from first principles probably is not ever going to get it. Third, regarding the CACM article, it's been liberated and made available online more than a few times. Try search engines. I know the Information Liberation Front (ILF) was actively liberating various of the key papers in the early months of the CP list...and these are mostly archived and searchable. And of course Chaum's original 1985 description has been redone many times, in later papers by him and others, etc. And I don't think it works at all, anyway... As it's been demonstrated to work, technically, this is a weird statement. Existence proofs are powerful. If you mean that Bank of America and Mastercard are not offering Chaum-style instruments, and so on, then this is not the same thing as saying the ideas don't work. --Tim May
Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)
On Friday, July 25, 2003, at 02:36 PM, Steve Furlong wrote: On Friday 25 July 2003 11:40, Steve Schear wrote: ... Now that many are un- or under-employed there still doesn't seem to be any activity by those active on this list in this critical infrastructure area. Speaking only for myself, I'm making a lot less than I was a couple of years ago. In the wake of the dot-bomb, I'm working a lot more hours just to keep my bills paid. I no longer have much time or creativity left for non-paying tasks. My analysis of the situation is that the peak creative years for CP ideas were 1992-95, and virtually no one on the list was being paid a cent for their efforts here or elsewhere. Some were students, some were libertarians with pent-up ideas about creating actual free societies or economies, some were engineers or programmers working for companies on unrelated projects, some were unemployed. The dot com era was actually a desert era...lots of nattering about raising VC money, buying other companies, creating grandiose plans to become rivals to Microsoft, and so on. Very few really good ideas in the 1996-00 era. And then came the crash. We haven't had much of an infusion of young blood--I believe this is closely related to Boomers and Heinlein, Rand, etc. and the differing interests of the young people of today and their anti-globalist, ring through nose politics--and those who got wiped out in the dot com frenzy have not gone back to blue sky thinking. A lot of them seem to be doing uninteresting (from a mathematical or first principles point of view) Unix security jobs. --Tim May
Re: R.I.P. (was: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online)
On Friday 25 July 2003 11:40, Steve Schear wrote: ... Now that many are un- or under-employed there still doesn't seem to be any activity by those active on this list in this critical infrastructure area. In some sense, we have enough code. Code exists that can be deployed. It may have to go thru the same evolutionary stages the P2P software is going thru (Napster to Kazza to ???) as security problems become serious, but it is deployed now. What we don't have is: * Patent licenses * Easy to use code * Users Techies can work on the ease of use issue, but patent licenses take time and/or money, and users take marketing and sales. Cheers - Bill - Bill Frantz | A Jobless Recovery is | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | like a Breadless Sand- | 16345 Englewood Ave. [EMAIL PROTECTED] | wich. -- Steve Schear | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
One point being overlooked here is digital versus physical anonymity. The funky ATM (what, does it smell or something?) will allow you to (among other things) stick in some cash and let someone else withdraw it using a password which you have sent him out of band (according to the patent - which I've actually read, more than anyone else here can say). This will allow for digital anonymity in the sense that there is no account information associated with the transaction. Now, it's true that ATMs take pictures of people, so you don't have full physical anonymity. But given the limited reliability of facial recognition systems, especially if you take simple precautions like wearing a hat and tilting your head down, you can have de facto very strong anonymity putting money into or taking it out of an ATM. The mere fact that it takes your picture doesn't mean that much. It's also true that the amount of cash that could be practically transfered in this way is limited to a few thousand dollars at most, given that the machines will probably only accept and dispense twenty dollar bills or equivalent. Nevertheless such payments would be a good start. The ability to pay or receive a few thousand dollars, untraceably, would enable a number of interesting applications involving freedom of speech and action. Writing custom software or providing sensitive information could be funded at these levels. The point which has been mostly overlooked is that this article was nothing but vapor, based on the issuance of a patent. There's a huge barrier between the idea and the implementation. A cash-transfer ATM would be a true boon to cypherpunk goals, but it is doubtful whether such a system will be allowed to exist in today's world.
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 11:16 AM, Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2003-07-23, Sunder uttered: If you want to do electronic payments that are non-anonymous you can simply use a credit card or debit card (or something like paypal, egold), or for larger quanitities you can do wire transfers - so why would we need yet another a non-anonymous cash that isn't cash? I only objected to the notion that all digicash needs to be anonymous in order to be desirable. I didn't say this particular system amounts to desirable weak digicash. To that end it would likely make far more sense in the short term e.g. to marry Visa Electronic to PayPal. In the long term multiple cooperating PayPal-like entities could then be used to build mixnets, making the digicash strongly anonymous. This continuing confusion, by many people, about what digicash is shows the problem with using nonspecific terms. In fact, digicash strongly suggests David Chaum's Digicash, not some name for all forms of credit cards, ATMs, debit cards, PayPal, wire transfer, Mondex, and a scad of other systems that may use bits and electronic signals. Conventionally, on this list and in the press about digital cash, digital cash means something which has the untraceable and/or anonymous features of cash while being transferred digitally. It is NOT a Visa system or a PayPal account or a wire instruction to the Cayman Islands. I choose not to call untraceable/anonymous digital cash by any of the marketing-oriented catchwords like Digicash, BearerBucks, E-coins, MeterMoney, whatever. So, I strongly agree with your point that not all electronic forms of money need to be anonymous (untraceable) in order to be useful. HOWEVER, our interest is in the untraceable/anonymous. There are no doubt active groups discussing PayPal, VISA, MasterCard, DiscoverCard, etc. But they have nothing to do with Cypherpunks. We should also fight the use of sloppy language in the press when mundane electronic funds transfer systems are called digital cash. --Tim May
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 03:17 PM, Sampo Syreeni wrote: On 2003-07-24, Tim May uttered: HOWEVER, our interest is in the untraceable/anonymous. Duh! You were gibbering about how digicash includes PayPal, ATMs, Visa, and other forms of transfers which are only digital in that computers are used. You need to think carefully about what blinding is all about. Calling Visa and PayPal digicash shows fundamental ignorance. Nitwit. But very typical of the new generation of rilly, rilly dumb cypherpunks. --Tim May
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Thursday 24 July 2003 15:50, Tim May wrote: In fact, digicash strongly suggests David Chaum's Digicash, That assumes the reader or listener has heard of Digicash, or of Chaum. Not an assumption I'd be comfortable making. I choose not to call untraceable/anonymous digital cash by any of the marketing-oriented catchwords like Digicash, BearerBucks, E-coins, MeterMoney, whatever. I tend to use electronic money when discussing coin- or account-based systems, anonymous or not, with the unwashed masses. It conveys the meaning well enough to serve as an opening wedge to a better description, and it's general enough that it shouldn't offend the sensibilities of those few people who do understand the subject in depth. And it hasn't been gobbled up by any company, so far as I know. -- Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all! -- Rep. Henry Waxman
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
Remember when the manufacturing jobs starting going south and they said don't worry, this is an information economy now, and they'll all be information workers? Not that I believed that at all, but now that all the information jobs are going south (or rather east and west), what are they claiming people will do here? Other than work at Hardee's, I mean. Well, there should be some Telecom contracts coming out of Iraq soon. And when those dry up maybe we'll find some more terrorists in, say, some of the 'stans. -TD From: Harmon Seaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2003 13:39:41 -0500 On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 10:25:59AM -0400, Sunder wrote: On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Steve Furlong wrote: (I won't be able to observe directly, as I was fired from that company because I'm an incompetent slacker (boss's view) or because the boss was a jack-booted jackass (my view).) Shit happens. Just be happy you're not working at IBM. It was leaked that they're outsourcing to India, etc... see: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10613 Remember when the manufacturing jobs starting going south and they said don't worry, this is an information economy now, and they'll all be information workers? Not that I believed that at all, but now that all the information jobs are going south (or rather east and west), what are they claiming people will do here? Other than work at Hardee's, I mean. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com _ Add photos to your messages with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 10:25:59AM -0400, Sunder wrote: On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Steve Furlong wrote: (I won't be able to observe directly, as I was fired from that company because I'm an incompetent slacker (boss's view) or because the boss was a jack-booted jackass (my view).) Shit happens. Just be happy you're not working at IBM. It was leaked that they're outsourcing to India, etc... see: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10613 Remember when the manufacturing jobs starting going south and they said don't worry, this is an information economy now, and they'll all be information workers? Not that I believed that at all, but now that all the information jobs are going south (or rather east and west), what are they claiming people will do here? Other than work at Hardee's, I mean. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
I wonder if some sort of infrared LED laden bandana be made for the benefit of the cameras. :) Maybe something like those scrolling blackboard things that say stuff... It could say things like I'm ANONYMOUS, Neener neener, nya, nya, nya I wonder what the guards would do then? --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of /|\ \|/ :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\ --*--:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech. \/|\/ /|\ :Found to date: 0. Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.\|/ + v + : The look on Sadam's face - priceless! [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Yes to all points. Of course, this is why a bandana/burkha/ski mask is a good thing to carry when approaching an ATM. Better if they're IR opaque. Best not to do this if the ATM is attached to a bank though, for the sake of the guards' underwear :-)
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
If the digicash isn't anonymous, it's worthless. I'd argue to the contrary. First, most people have nothing to hide. The folks will want digicash for reasons other than anonymity, as argued You are misusing the term cash. What you are describing are essentially internet debit cards. While it is attractive to insert word cash into any harebrained net money scheme, exactly because of positive associations with CASH, it is misleading and deceptive. Cash means off-line clearing and anonymous. If it is complicated to understand, open your wallet, take a banknote out of it and ponder what it is for a minute. = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
On Monday 21 July 2003 01:12, R. A. Hettinga wrote: http://nytimes.com/2003/07/21/technology/21PATE.html?pagewanted=prin tposition= A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online I worked on a commercial digital money system a few years ago. One of their business models was almost identical to Amos': stick cash in a kiosk to get electronic money. It'd be interesting to see how that system plays with Amos' patent. (I won't be able to observe directly, as I was fired from that company because I'm an incompetent slacker (boss's view) or because the boss was a jack-booted jackass (my view).) -- Steve FurlongComputer Condottiere Have GNU, Will Travel If someone is so fearful that, that they're going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, makes me very nervous that these people have these weapons at all! -- Rep. Henry Waxman
A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
http://nytimes.com/2003/07/21/technology/21PATE.html?pagewanted=printposition= The New York Times July 21, 2003 A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online By TERESA RIORDAN the 1997 science-fiction movie The Velocity Trap, the interstellar banking system is so decimated by electronic crime that the only way to exchange money is in cold hard cash. Armored federal banking ships have to shuttle currency from planet to planet. Carl Amos, an inventor in Atlanta, also anticipates a return to the cash economy but without the computer-generated visual effects. Mr. Amos recently patented a way to pay for online transactions with bills and coins rather than credit or banking cards. In upwards of three-quarters of the world, most money transactions are cash only, said Mr. Amos, who envisions a big market for his invention. Basically, what Mr. Amos has patented is a new combination of existing technologies. His patent, No. 6,554,184, covers a modified A.T.M. that not only dispenses money but, like a vending machine, accepts cash, which can be used to transfer money from one person to another or to pay for online purchases. It's a method patent, a new way of doing business, Mr. Amos said. These are off-the-shelf components. All I had to do was build the machine and write the software. Mr. Amos is a rare breed: an independent inventor who actually makes a living off his inventions. A former electrical engineer at I.B.M. , he left corporate life to develop his idea for a holographic lens. Since he patented the lens in 1994, he estimates, he has received about $1 million in royalties. Mr. Amos, one of six children, grew up on a farm in Ohio, where he set up his own skunk works in a shed. Not all his inventions were successful. One was a parachute to be worn while leaping off the garage. I survived, obviously, Mr. Amos said. My siblings survived, too, thank goodness. Mr. Amos said his latest invention, should it become widely available, would obviate the need for services provided by Western Union and other money-transfer companies. Another big market in the United States, Mr. Amos said, might be teenagers. Though they do not usually have their own credit cards, they usually have cash and are more than willing to spend it to download music or games. Mr. Amos also said his system should appeal to those who were worried about identity theft on the Internet or who simply wanted the privacy it provided. Gamblers may be interested in the technology. Many credit-card companies, for example, will not authorize payments to gambling sites. Nor will PayPal, the biggest third-party payment option on the Internet. Tom Turano, a law partner specializing in banking patents at Testa Hurwitz Thibeault in Boston, called the invention a cute idea. It's like a funky A.T.M., Mr. Turano said. But the patent itself, he said, is fairly narrow and may be easy for others to come up with similar inventions that do not infringe the patent. Mr. Amos, who is represented by a licensing firm in Connecticut, said he was approaching banks about licensing his patent. Western Union and Moneygram haven't called me yet, Mr. Amos said. But I don't expect them to. -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
