Video: Copy Machines, a Security Risk?

CBS NEWS America [CBS Corporation] - April 19, 2010 This year marks the 50th anniversary of the good, old-fashioned copy machine. But, as Armen Keteyian reports, advanced technology has opened a dangerous hole in data security. Ed. Note: Many still live under the false assumption that if one has nothing to hide and does nothing wrong then they have no reason to be afraid of ever encroaching laws that destroy our civil liberties in the name of security or new technologies that make life easier and are also being marketed as a means of safety and identity protection. However, as this report clearly shows, it is this very technology that is easily flawed by unforeseen security breaches or a lack or understanding or concern on the part of the public that is increasingly putting all of us, no matter how careful in danger. One can easily see how in the near future many will be demanding a solution to the consequences of our entire society becoming dependant on technology that is so easily manipulated for evil means. Lord Jesus Christ come quickly! BE/\LERT! http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6412572n FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

F.C.C. Moves to Expand Role in Broadband

NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Edward Wyatt - June 17, 2010 A version of this article appeared in print on June 18, 2010, on page B2 of the New York edition WASHINGTON - The Federal Communications Commission voted 3 to 2 on Thursday to move toward giving itself the authority to regulate the transmission component of broadband Internet service, a power the commission’s majority believes is central to expanding the availability of broadband. The vote formally begins a period of public comment on an F.C.C. proposal to overturn a previous commission ruling that classified broadband transmission as a lightly regulated information service. The proposal would designate broadband transmission as a telecommunications service, which, as with telephone service, would make it subject to stricter regulation. The commission has said it intends to exempt broadband service from most of the regulatory options it has under the stricter designation, keeping only those regulations that are necessary “to implement fundamental universal service, competition and market entry, and consumer protection policies.” It would not regulate Internet content. Opponents of the reclassification say that it would give the F.C.C. the power to regulate rates charged to consumers by broadband service providers, something that Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the commission, has said that it does not intend to do. The F.C.C. began reconsidering its broadband regulation policies after a federal court of appeals in April invalidated the approach that the commission had long taken. That decision involved the commission’s ability to require that Internet service providers not discriminate against any content or application. The F.C.C. claimed that Comcast had done so in blocking access by its users to BitTorrent, a file-sharing service. Mr. Genachowski said the commission was seeking comment on three possibilities - keeping regulation as it is, imposing a full telecommunications regulatory regime, and a “third way” approach of limited regulation. He likened that approach to the way the commission has regulated mobile phone services for nearly 20 years. “The third way approach was developed out of a desire to restore the status quo light-touch framework that existed prior to the court case,” Mr. Genachowski said. “Let’s not pretend that the problems with the state of broadband in America don’t exist; let’s not pretend that the risk of excessive regulation is not real, or, at the other extreme, that the absence of basic protections for competition and consumers is acceptable.” Commissioners Michael J. Copps and Mignon Clyburn joined Mr. Genachowski in voting to open the comment process, while Meredith Attwell Baker and Robert M. McDowell opposed it. In her dissenting statement, Ms. Baker said the proposal “will place the heavy thumb of government on the scale of a free market to the point where innovation and investment in the ‘core’ of the Net are subjected to the whims of ‘Mother-May-I’ regulators.” Future commission members, she said, could overturn current decisions to regulate broadband service only lightly. Unedited :: Link to Original Posting http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/business/18fcc.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

F.C.C. Proposes Rules on Internet Access

NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Edward Wyatt - May 6, 2010 A version of this article appeared in print on May 7, 2010, on page B3 of the New York edition [...] Opponents, including some telecommunications companies that provide broadband Internet service, said the approach would create uncertainty and legal battles that would slow the development of technologies that could benefit consumers. ... The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said in April that the F.C.C.’s classification of broadband service as an “information service” rather than as a “telecommunications service” did not allow it to sanction Comcast for slowing or blocking access by its customers to an application known as BitTorrent, which is used to share large data files including video and audio. The new approach, which the F.C.C. called a “third way,” would rely on a legal theory that recognizes the computing function and the broadband transmission component of retail Internet access service as separate things subject to different regulation. The approach is similar to one that the commission has used to regulate aspects of wireless communications service, Mr. Genachowski said. And it relies in part on a 2005 United States Supreme Court decision, National Cable and Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services. In that case, the court said that Congress gave the F.C.C. the authority to decide how it would regulate Internet service. ... Telecommunications companies said they believed the F.C.C. had overstepped. The National Cable and Telecommunications Association, with whom the F.C.C. sided in the Brand X case, called the decision “fraught with legal uncertainty and practical consequences which pose real risks to our ability to provide the high-quality and innovative services that our customers expect.” Thomas J. Tauke, an executive vice president at Verizon, said the new approach was “legally unsupported” and could only bring “confusion and delay to the important work of continuing to build the nation’s broadband future.” ... Consumer advocates praised the decision, at least in part. Public Knowledge, a consumer interest group, said it supported the approach but was dismayed by the commission’s decision that “open access” provisions of the Communications Act - which require companies to share access to the physical lines of connection that enter consumers’ homes - did not apply to broadband access as they did to basic telephone service. Joel Kelsey, a policy analyst for Consumers Union, said the F.C.C. “appears to have found a way to ensure it has the authority to protect consumers from potential anticompetitive actions by providers of broadband services.” Comcast, which successfully fought the commission over its regulatory authority, said in a statement that it was prepared “to work constructively” with the F.C.C. on “limited but effective measures” to preserve an open Internet, as long as they did not put the industry under a regulatory cloud. Edited :: See Original Report Here http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/07/technology/07broadband.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Mandatory ISP filter due mid-2011

ZDNet.com.au [CBS Corporation/CBS Interactive] - By Liam Tung - December 15, 2009 Mandatory ISP filtering legislation will be introduced around the middle of 2010, after which there will be a one year period to implement and activate the filtering technology. The Federal Government today announced it will introduce amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act, which will by 2011 require all ISPs to block refused classification-rated material hosted on overseas servers. As part of the new legislation, the government intends to explore what additional process could be implemented around how websites are added to the government's "Refused Classification" (RC) list. Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy today released a discussion paper seeking stakeholder feedback on how the new list should be overseen and by which agency. "The government will immediately undertake public consultation with the release today of a discussion paper on additional measures to improve the accountability and transparency of processes that lead to RC-rated material being placed on the RC Content list," Conroy said. It appears though that the government has already decided how the RC list will be generated, indicating it would be compiled via "public complaints mechanism". It is not clear yet what this mechanism is. Other sources for the new RC list would include known URLs shared between international agencies. The obvious contender for the new RC list's oversight is the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), which manages a list of locally hosted illegal content, and issues so-called "take-down" notices to local operators. Options Conroy said would be considered included appeal mechanisms, notification to website owners of RC content and the review by an independent expert and report to the Parliament. While it's still uncertain whether ACMA will be appointed to the role, Conroy today flagged that the agency would be allocated extra funds to boost the security of the RC Content list. It also intends to send automated updates to the ISPs. Unedited :: Link to Original Posting http://www.zdnet.com.au/mandatory-isp-filter-due-mid-2011-339300060.htm FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking

NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Stephanie Clifford - September 29, 2009 ABOUT two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers - and that number rises once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements, according to a new survey from professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. The professors say they believe the study, scheduled for release on Wednesday, is the first independent, nationally representative telephone survey on behavioral advertising. The topic may be technical, but it has become a hot political issue. Privacy advocates are telling Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that tracking of online activities by Web sites and advertisers has gone too far, and the lawmakers seem to be listening. Representative Rick Boucher, Democrat of Virginia, wrote in an article for The Hill last week that he planned to introduce privacy legislation. And David Vladeck, head of consumer protection for the F.T.C., has signaled that he will examine data privacy issues closely. Marketers are arguing that advertising supports free online content. Major advertising trade groups proposed in Julysome measures that they hoped would fend off regulation, like a clear notice to consumers when they were being tracked. The data in this area, however, has been largely limited to company-financed research or Internet-based research, which survey experts say they believe is not representative of all Americans. So the study - among the first independent surveys to examine this issue - has attracted widespread interest. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/30/business/media/30adco.html?th=&adxnnl=1&emc=th&adxnnlx=1254316646-aKun0OM1VaGiFVEuPECy5w FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

The shopping experience of the future? RFID Tracking from Start to Finish

How Destiny would track shoppers at Carousel Center expansion THE POST-STANDARD, Syracuse, New York [Advance/Newhouse] - By Rick Moriarty - August 24, 2009 Syracuse, NY -- Hidden in a secret location deep inside the Carousel Center mall is what Destiny USA officials believe is the future of the retail industry. A 1,000-square-foot room with translucent flooring contains what appears to be a small clothing store with just two products -- T-shirts and cloth handbags with the words "Surrender the past" printed on them. But what makes the "store" unique isn't the see-through floor. It's the technology behind the walls, under the shelves and attached to each T-shirt and handbag. Through the use of a radio frequency identification system, the store can track what products a customer picks up, instantly send detailed information and customer reviews of those products to the shopper's iPhone, and make suggestions, via nearby computer screens, of other products that might interest the customer. The system even tracks customers as they walk through the store and displays on the computer screens items, in their size and preferred fabrics, that they might want to consider, based on their past shopping habits. At the self-checkout desk, the customer just drops merchandise on the desk and an antenna built into the desk picks up a radio signal from a sticker attached to each of the items and rings them up. There are no UPC symbols to scan. The customer swipes a credit card through a reader and the sale is complete. It's paperless, too. The system e-mails a receipt to the customer and records the purchase on the customer's account. Shoppers in this store cannot actually buy anything. It's set up just to give select visitors a demonstration of the technology behind Destiny's new retail concept, which it calls Arendi. Destiny partner Bruce Kenan said the model combines the convenience of Internet shopping -- the instant availability of detailed product information and comparisons from multiple manufacturers and user reviews -- with the ability to touch, smell and try a product. "This is a marriage of Internet and physical retail," said Kenan. "People are going to like it. They're going to demand it." Kenan and three executives from Terakeet Corp., the Syracuse company that is assembling the technology behind Arendi, gave a Post-Standard reporter and photographer a tour of the "store." The only condition was that the newspaper could not reveal where in the mall the room is located. Developer Robert Congel, the man behind Carousel's stalled expansion into Destiny USA, envisions the addition as a giant consumer research and development center where consumer shopping habits are tracked by a network of computers. The name Arendi is a play on the term "R&D," short for research and development. Retailers and brand makers who become part of the center would share all of the consumer insight data collected at Arendi -- in exchange for all of their profits. It's a concept that has never been tried before on a mall scale, and it has not been easy to sell the idea to a retail industry that saw sales fall 10.8 percent in the second quarter, compared with the same quarter last year. The secret "store" hidden inside Carousel Center was created to show off Arendi's technology to potential tenants. Destiny officials had planned to open a 50,000-square-foot version of Arendi to the public late this summer with a limited, undisclosed number of tenants who have agreed to be part of the demonstration. The hope was that the public demonstration would help the developer lure enough tenants to eventually fill the three-story, 1.3 million-square-foot mall expansion. Construction, which began in 2007, came to a halt in early June after Citigroup stopped advancing money on a $155 million loan to the project. The bank said it was concerned that the project was a year over schedule, at least $15 million over budget and had not a single signed lease. Congel is suing Citigroup, alleging it breached its loan agreement. The sudden halt to construction has not dimmed the development team's enthusiasm for Arendi, however. Kenan said it's amazing no one thought of combining e-commerce with stores in this way before. The goal of Arendi will be to give shoppers at the mall all of the things they like about online shopping -- primarily instant access to product information -- while they walk through a store, touching and feeling the merchandise, he said. And it will benefit retailers and product makers because they can personalize their in-store sales promotions to customers as they shop. The system also can help retailers keep instant track of when to reorder popular merchandise, he said. "One of the worst things for retailers is to run out of a product that is in demand," he said. Customers would have to register at an Arendi Web site, providing their name and e-mail address. If they'd like, they could also provide personal information such as age, clothing sizes and preferred fabrics. In return, they would be given customer ID tags, plastic cards about the size of credit cards. They would carry the cards with them when they go shopping at Arendi, just as they carry shoppers club cards to grocery stores. "Once you're registered, you can just walk around and shop as you normally would," said Ryan Garver, lead developer for Terakeet. In a demonstration of the technology, Garver walked with the card to a shelf full of T-shirts and a large computer screen in the middle. As he approached the shirts, the screen displayed a picture of one of the shirts, in his size. An antenna under the display read an electronic signal from his customer ID tag and called up information he provided about himself when he registered. If a group of customers approached a merchandise display, the system would know who they are and display information that it believed would be of interest to a majority of them, he said. To find out more about the merchandise in front of him, Garver glanced at his iPhone. Terakeet has written an application for the iPhone that will talk to Arendi's computer network through the Internet to provide customers with more detailed information about the products they are looking at. Garver said the company plans to write similar applications for other hand-held communications devices, too. If a store in Arendi did not have the size and color of the product a customer wants, it could be ordered from the interactive computer displays in the store or through the customer's iPhone or other Web-based communication devices, he said. Kenan said retailers will be able to use information collected at Arendi -- not just data collected in their own stores or display areas -- to improve the customer experience at all of their locations. "We'll have a knowledge base that no other retailer can get by themselves," he said. Staff writer Rick Moriarty can be reached at 470-3148 or rmoriarty@syracuse.com http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/how_destiny_would_track_shoppe.html FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Dollar loses reserve status to yen & euro

NEW YORK POST [News Corporation/Murdoch] - By Paul Tharp - October 13, 2009 Ben Bernanke's dollar crisis went into a wider mode yesterday as the greenback was shockingly upstaged by the euro and yen, both of which can lay claim to the world title as the currency favored by central banks as their reserve currency. Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen -- not the greenbacks -- a nearly complete reversal of the dollar's onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar's share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent -- compared with two-thirds a decade ago. Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks -- the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund. Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table. After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy -- ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other. "He's in a crisis worse than the meltdown ever was," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital. "I fear that he could be the Fed chairman who brought down the whole thing." Investors and central banks are snubbing dollars because the greenback is kept too weak by zero interest rates and a flood of greenbacks in the global economy. They grumble that they've loaned the US record amounts to cover its mounting debt, but are getting paid back by a currency that's worth 10 percent less in the past three months alone. In a decade, it's down nearly one-third. Yesterday, the dollar had a mixed performance, falling slightly against the British pound to $1.5801 from $1.5846 Friday, but rising against the euro to $1.4779 from $1.4709 and against the yen to 89.85 yen from 89.78. Economists believe the market rebellion against the dollar will spread until Bernanke starts raising interest rates from around zero to the high single digits, and pulls back the flood of currency spewed from US printing presses. "That's a cure, but it's also going to stifle any US economic growth," said Schiff. "The economy is addicted to the cheap interest and liquidity." Economists warn that a jump in rates will clobber stocks and cripple the already stalled housing market. "Bernanke's other choice is to keep rates at zero, print even more money and sell more debt, but we'll see triple-digit inflation that could collapse the economy as we know it. "The stimulus is what's toxic -- we're poisoning ourselves and the global economy with it." http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/dollar_loses_reserve_status_to_yen_hFyfwvpBW1YYLykSJwTTEL FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Pay with a wave of your hand?

An implantable chip could allow you to charge purchases or even start your car. It'd be convenient, to be sure. But would it be too creepy? CREDITCARDS.com - By Jay MacDonald - September 11, 2009 It's a simple concept, really: You inject a miniature radio frequency identifier the size of a grain of rice between your thumb and forefinger and, with a wave of your hand, unlock doors, turn on lights, start your car or pay for your drinks at an ultrachic nightspot. The problem is, the whole concept is a little geeky for most of us, nauseating for some, Orwellian for a few and even apocalyptic for a smattering of religious fundamentalists. Forget the science of it -- and yes, it does work remarkably well. Forget the convenience of it. Forget that similar identifying technologies, from bar codes to mag stripes, overcame similar obstacles and are now ubiquitous. Radio frequency ID implants face a hurdle the others did not: ickiness. "There is sort of an icky quality to implanting something," says Rome Jette, the vice president for smart cards at Versatile Card Technology, a Downers Grove, Ill., card manufacturer that ships 1.5 billion cards worldwide a year. How RFID devices work The RFID technology is un-yucky, however. The implanted tag -- a passive RFID device consisting of a miniature antenna and chip containing a 16-digit identification number -- is scanned by an RFID reader. Once verified, the number is used to unlock a database file, be it a medical record or payment information. Depending upon the application, a reader may verify tags at a distance of 4 inches up to about 30 feet. The RFID implant has been around for more than 20 years. In its earliest iteration, it provided a convenient way to keep track of dogs, cats and prized racehorses. Few took note or voiced much concern. ... Then, in 2002, Applied Digital Solutions (now Digital Angel) of Delray Beach, Fla., deployed to its foreign distributors a beta version of its patented VeriChip technology for human use. Two years later, the VeriChip became the first subcutaneous RFID chip to receive FDA approval as a Class 2 medical device. One VeriChip distributor in Spain sold the concept to the ultratrendy Baja Beach Club, which offered its patrons in Barcelona and Amsterdam the option of having an implant inserted in their upper arms to pay for their drinks without having to carry wallets in their swimsuits. Judging by the ensuing outrage, you would think VeriChip had given the pope a wedgie. 'Mark of the beast'? Web sites sprouted like mushrooms, accusing VeriChip of being the biblical "mark of the beast" predicted in the Book of Revelations as a foreshadowing of the end of the world. CEO Scott Silverman was equally vilified as being tied to Satan or, worse, Wall Street. Big Brother was surely coming, though he'd have to get pretty close to read your implant. Claims that the tags cause cancer based on lab rat tests upped the amps of outrage. Were people suddenly curious about RFID implants? "Curiosity is probably an understatement," Silverman concedes. "People have always taken interest in VeriChip. Part of the lore and part of the trouble of this company over the past five years has been just that." Though VeriChip played no part in using its implant as a payment device, the company quickly moved to calmer waters. Today, it markets its VeriMed Health Link patient identification system to help hospitals treat noncommunicative patients in an emergency. Its future may include more advanced medical applications, including a biosensor system to detect glucose levels. "A lot of the negative press that we received was a direct result of people having a misconception of what this technology is all about," says Silverman. "We believe that the medical application was and still is the best application for this technology. "That said, if and when it does become mainstream and more patients are utilizing it for their medical records or for diagnostic purposes, if they want to elect to use it for other applications, certainly they'll be able to do that. But it's going to take a company much larger than us to distribute the retail reader end of it into the Wal-Marts of the world." Versatile's Jette has watched contactless RFID battle for acceptance in the credit card arena. Just as Silverman suggests, the dynamics and scale of the payment industry tends to work against widespread deployment. "Mobil Speedpass tried to do it; they got some traction and decided to see if there was any mileage to take this to a Walgreens or McDonald's. You used to be able to use your Speedpass at McDonalds, but that ended because, at the end of the day, you still only have two gigantic payment processors out there, Visa and MasterCard," he says. "To me, the idea of any kind of payment device having ubiquity requires an awful lot of back-end cooperation, of people willing to say, 'I don't need my brand in the customer's wallet.'" Although the coolness factor is effective from a marketing standpoint -- American Express Blue with its smart (if largely unused) chip is a good example -- Jette says most cardholders would balk at the very thought of a needle. "With the implanting in the nightclubs, there is a cache of exclusivity there, especially among a certain demographic where people are piercing themselves and getting tattoos. But those are things that really only 20-somethings do a lot. I really doubt that there will be any market for injectable RFID tags or even any single point-of-sale payment device." "A lot of times, the technology is a solution looking for a problem. Sometimes people fall in love with the technology for its own sake and then try to evangelize a home for it. My business group is just smart cards, and I never forget that although we make money with smart cards, the bills are paid with mag stripe cards. As backwards and old-fashioned as they are, that is still the bulk of what the transactions are going to be in America for a very long time." This article was reported by Jay MacDonald for CreditCards.com. http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/FinancialPrivacy/pay-with-a-wave-of-your-hand.aspx FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

China’s REAL ID: Name Not on Our List? Change It, China Says

NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Sharon LaFraniere - April 20, 2009 BEIJING - “Ma,” a Chinese character for horse, is the 13th most common family name in China, shared by nearly 17 million people. That can cause no end of confusion when Mas get together, especially if those Mas also share the same given name, as many Chinese do. Ma Cheng’s book-loving grandfather came up with an elegant solution to this common problem. Twenty-six years ago, when his granddaughter was born, he combed through his library of Chinese dictionaries and lighted upon a character pronounced “cheng.” Cheng, which means galloping steeds, looks just like the character for horse, except that it is condensed and written three times in a row. The character is so rare that once people see it, Miss Ma said, they tend to remember both her and her name. That is one reason she likes it so much. That is also why the government wants her to change it. For Ma Cheng and millions of others, Chinese parents’ desire to give their children a spark of individuality is colliding head-on with the Chinese bureaucracy’s desire for order. Seeking to modernize its vast database on China’s 1.3 billion citizens, the government’s Public Security Bureau has been replacing the handwritten identity card that every Chinese must carry with a computer-readable one, complete with color photos and embedded microchips. The new cards are harder to forge and can be scanned at places like airports where security is a priority. The bureau’s computers, however, are programmed to read only 32,252 of the roughly 55,000 Chinese characters, according to a 2006 government report. The result is that Miss Ma and at least some of the 60 million other Chinese with obscure characters in their names cannot get new cards - unless they change their names to something more common. Moreover, the situation is about to get worse or, in the government’s view, better. Since at least 2003, China has been working on a standardized list of characters for people to use in everyday life, including when naming children. One newspaper reported last week that the list would be issued later this year and would curb the use of obscure names. A government linguistics official told Xinhua, the state-run news agency, that the list would include more than 8,000 characters. Although that is far fewer than the database now supposedly includes, the official said it was more than enough “to convey any concept in any field.” About 3,500 characters are in everyday use. Government officials suggest that names have gotten out of hand, with too many parents picking the most obscure characters they can find or even making up characters, like linguistic fashion accessories. But many Chinese couples take pride in searching the rich archives of classical Chinese to find a distinctive, pleasing name, partly to help their children stand out in a society with strikingly few surnames. By some estimates, 100 surnames cover 85 percent of China’s citizens. Laobaixing, or “old hundred names,” is a colloquial term for the masses. By contrast, 70,000 surnames cover 90 percent of Americans. The number of Chinese family names in use has tended to shrink as China’s population has grown, a winnowing of surnames that has occurred in many cultures over time. At last count, China’s Wangs were leading with more than 92 million, followed by 91 million Lis and 86 million Zhangs. To refer to an unidentified person — the equivalent of “just anybody” in English — one Chinese saying can be loosely translated this way: “some Zhang, some Li.” The potential for mix-ups is vast. There are nearly enough Chinese named Zhang Wei to populate the city of Pittsburgh. Nicknames are liberally bestowed in classrooms and workplaces to tell people apart. Confronting three students named Liu Fang, for example, one middle-school teacher nicknamed them Big, Little and Middle. Wang Daliang, a linguistics scholar with the China Youth University for Political Science, said picking rare characters for given names only compounded the problem and inconvenienced everyone. “Using obscure names to avoid duplication of names or to be unique is not good,” he wrote in an e-mail response to questions. “Now a lot of people are perplexed by their names,” he said. “The computer cannot even recognize them and people cannot read them. This has become an obstacle in communication.” But Professor Zhou Youyong, dean of Southeast University’s law school, said the government should tread carefully in issuing any new regulation. “The right to name children is a basic right of citizens,” he said. Miss Ma said that while her given name was unusual, bank employees, passport control clerks and ticket agents had always managed to deal with it, usually by writing it by hand. But when she tried to renew her identity card last August, she said, Beijing public security officials turned her down flat. “Your name is so troublesome and problematic,” she recalled an official telling her. “Just change it.” Miss Ma argues that the government’s technology should adapt, not her. “There were no such regulations when I was born, so I should be entitled to keep my name for my whole life,” she said. If she changes her name to get an identity card, she noted, it will be wrong on all of her other documents, like her passport and university diploma. Besides, she said, “I can’t think of another, better name.” Using the time-honored Chinese method of backdoor connections, Miss Ma was able to get a temporary card in January. She must renew it every three months but considers that a small sacrifice for keeping her name. Zhao C., a 23-year-old college student, gave up the fight for his. His father, a lawyer, chose the letter C from the English alphabet, saying it was simple, memorable and stood for China. When he could not get a new identity card in 2006, Zhao C. sued. But security officials convinced him that it would cost millions of dollars to alter the database, his father said, so he dropped the suit in February. His case might suggest that resistance against China’s powerful bureaucracy was futile. Still, the government’s plan to limit the use of characters has not gone all that smoothly. The new rules were originally supposed to be issued by 2005. Now, 70 revisions later, they have yet to be put in place. An official this week batted away questions, saying publicity might delay the rules even longer. Huang Yuanxi contributed research. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/world/asia/21china.html?th&emc=th FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Most Doctors Aren’t Using Electronic Health Records

NEW YORK TIMES [NYTimes Group/Sulzberger] - By Steve Lohr - June 19, 2008 A government-sponsored survey of the use of computerized patient records by doctors points to two seemingly contradictory conclusions, and a health care system at odds with itself. The report, published online on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that doctors who use electronic health records say overwhelmingly that such records have helped improve the quality and timeliness of care. Yet fewer than one in five of the nation’s doctors has started using such records. Bringing patient records into the computer age, experts say, is crucial to improving care, reducing errors and containing costs in the American health care system. The slow adoption of the technology is mainly economic. Most doctors in private practice, especially those in small practices, lack the financial incentive to invest in computerized records. The national survey found that electronic records were used in less than 9 percent of small offices with one to three doctors, where nearly half of the country’s doctors practice medicine. - - - - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/technology/19patient.html?ex=1371614400&en=ff467606eb24767e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Will that be cash or thumb, sir?

Alert Focus: Mark of the Beast

Revelation 13:16-17
And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name...

Citibank rolls out world's first biometric credit card service, targets yuppies here
SINGAPORE NEWS - By Chow Penn Nee -- November 10, 2006 -- Citibank has just raised the bar for the already saturated credit card market.
You won't even need a physical card any longer to party, dine or shop. All you will need is your thumb, for a scan.
Rolling out the world's first biometric credit card service yesterday, the American bank is targeting Singapore yuppies for the launch, before extending it to the rest of its over 700,000 card members here.
With the free service, cardholders need only press their finger to a biometric scanner located at participating stores. Currently, only nine outlets offer this service but others will be roped in.
Not only can customers cut down on payment queue times, they have the added protection against card fraud, said Mr Jonathan Larsen, chief executive officer and country business manager, Citibank Singapore.
"With the credit card becoming very much a part of our daily lives, consumers want greater flexibility in making payments," he said, adding that this move will transform the local payments industry.
The global bank is also looking at using biometrics for Internet banking. Other forms of biometrics involve authentication via facial and voice recognition.
Commenting on the security of the system, Mr John Morris, president and chief operating officer of US-based technology partner Pay By Touch, said the service has "military-level encryption" to ensure data security.
To assuage fears that the data collected would be misused along the way, Mr Larsen said that the digitised fingerprints are encrypted and stored in different databases from other information like the name and card numbers of cardholders.
This keeps the information separate and prevents abuse, said the bank.
Mr Larsen declined to reveal the investment amount of its biometric service, except to say it is in the "multi-million" range.
But it certainly raises the competition for a market that has seen a slew of creative concepts over the years — such as shrinking the cards by half — to woo the crowds.
On whether the latest biometric system will take off, intellectual property lawyer Bryan Tan said: "It's innovative. The current card technology has flaws, as we have seen from security breaches in cloning of credit cards."
But he added that its popularity would depend on acceptance by both merchants and users.
http://www.todayonline.com/articles/153778.asp

FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of religious, environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.