[FYI] Digital Cash and the Surveillance Society

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/sphill/punks.htm

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Draft of cypherpunks section of  

"Digital Cash and the Surveillance Society:  

Negotiating identification in new consumer electronic payment 
systems."  

Doctoral Dissertation of David J. Phillips  

Annenberg School for Communication  

University of Pennsylvania  

DRAFT FOR COMMENT ONLY  

NOT FOR PUBLICATION OR CITATION  

Please mail comments to djp@pobox.asc.upenn.edu  

Introduction  

This research presumes that identification and categorization are 
primary modes of discipline, and so focuses on investigating link 
between authorization and identification in consumer transactions. 
The research does this by analyzing and reconstructing sociotechnical 
negotiations concerning systems which have the potential to break 
that link. The research asks:  

What are the processes by which standards of anonymity and 
traceability are incorporated into systems which permit the 
electronic transfer of valuable tokens? Who are the participants in 
this process? What institutional and discursive rules and resources 
do they use? What is the result of that use?  

The fundamental feature of the technologies under study is their 
ability to authorize transactions without identifying the parties in 
the transaction. This research focuses on systems which meet three 
criteria:  

They offer digital payment systems to the general consumer. Payments 
occur without reference to the user's account, though they may 
require on-line authorization of the token itself. The payment system 
ostensibly offers "privacy" or "anonymity" or makes reference to the 
traceability of payments.  

I have identified three companies which either offer such a system or 
plan to do so in the near future. These companies are DigiCash 
(Ecash), Mondex, and Citibank (EMS).  

Discourses provide frameworks for debating the value of one way of 
talking about reality over other ways. The first part of this project 
is a deconstruction of the discourses which describe and in part 
constitute these sociotechnical systems.  

Three sites of discourse were chosen for analysis: articles in the 
general and popular press, postings to the cypherpunks electronic 
mailing list, and testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives. 
 
[...]  

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