FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

Digital Cash and the Surveillance Society

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

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NOT FOR PUBLICATION OR CITATION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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