One of the consequences of an increasingly electronics-oriented economy will be the need to provide some amount of anonymity and privacy for users of such a digital cash system in order to ensure that electronic money remains anonymous and untraceable, except by the payer and payee. Government approval will be requisite for digital cash to gain full approval by the business community and public, and the government may require access to these transaction records to prevent what might otherwise become “perfect crimes.”
Predictor: Hoffman, Lance
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 research article on cryptography policy, authors Lance Hoffman, Anne Huybrechts, Ali Faraz and Steven Heckler write: ”Credit cards and ATMs are the forerunners of what may soon become ‘digital cash.’ On the average, people use less pocket cash every year. Indeed, credit card purchases are now used for one-tenth of all consumer payments. David Chaum, head of Cryptography Group at the Center for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) in Amsterdam, has proposed a distributed smart-card system which, using public key cryptography, allows anonymous cash embodied by the cards to be used as real money. One of the consequences of an increasingly electronics-oriented economy will be the need to provide some amount of anonymity and privacy for users of such a digital cash system in order to ensure that electronic money remains anonymous and untraceable, except by the payer and payee. Government approval will be requisite for digital cash to gain full approval by the business community and public, and the government may require access to these transaction records to prevent what might otherwise become ‘perfect crimes.'”
Biography:Lance Hoffman, a professor at George Washington University, was a security expert and the author of the 1994 National Science Foundation paper “Civilizing Cyberspace: Priority Policy Issues in a National Information Infrastructure” in addition to many other research pieces in the 1990s. He wrote the book “Rogue Programs: Viruses, Worms and Trojan Horses” (Van Nostrand Rheinhold, 1990). (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: E-cash
Name of publication: Communications of the ACM
Title, headline, chapter name: Cryptography Policy
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://web4.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/833/751/34311839w4/purl=rc2_EAIM_1_Cryptography+Policy___09/1994______________________________________________________&dyn=sig!2?sw_aep=ncliveec
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Johnson, Kathleen