Re: Web Payments and Privacy

On 2/6/13 1:18 AM, Iris Peetz wrote:
> Secretariat
> Berlin Commissioner for
> Data Protection and Freedom of Information
>
> International Working Group
> on Data Protection
> in Telecommunications

Greetings,

To me their email is an interesting development. The "White Paper on 
Privacy and Electronic Micropayment on the Internet" attachment they 
sent I find succinct and cogent.

I'm fully in agreement with what they ask for, that either anonymous 
or pseudonymous payment should be built into the open payment standard 
as a necessary available option for an end-user.

I also agree with their reasoning: the surreptitious theft of data and 
the rise of an advertising economy built on this data is an unhealthy 
development. If this becomes attached to people's purchases, even 
micropayment purchases, it will only get worse.

I'm in this group largely because I believe the things the Berlin 
group are asking for. I think it's a pivotal idea. So I strongly 
recommend that this be included.

I'm not familiar enough with PaySwarm at the coding level to know if 
this, as a necessary option, is already built into it. Is it?

To me, having this as a requirement in PaySwarm is a very good thing. 
It will mean that if PaySwarm is adopted by, say, both FireFox and 
Chrome, Google can't say, "we refuse to allow anonymous or 
pseudonymous payments through Chrome because we want to steal people's 
personal and payment data and sell it to advertisers."

It appears from the Berlin group's letter and White Paper that 
governments -- at least in the EU -- may get involved in legislating 
the necessity for this option.

But I'm probably preaching to the converted. :-)  What's the state of 
this in PaySwarm?


Steven Rowat

Received on Wednesday, 6 February 2013 17:50:37 UTC