THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

hackers - who had patiently created a database with credit card
numbers, credit limits and approval codes - disappeared one day in
2002 after charging hundreds of millions of dollars on hundreds of
thousands of accounts. After that, the smart-card payment
technology imposed itself almost overnight, and the tie-in with
electronic ID made a lot of sense to improve security. However, after
the global social unrest of 2006, two additional types of data were
added, first in the US: the PSC level and the PEC order, operating in
both physical space and the cybersphere.' (See " note.)
He continued, with some sadness in his voice: 'I remember seeing a
BBC newscast back in 1996 about trends in America. It mentioned
The Mall of the Americas in Minneapolis - the largest shopping mall
in the world at that time - where, because of security considerations,
access was prohibited to unaccompanied teenagers a the request of
adult shoppers. These youngsters didn't have the economic buying
power to justify their presence there anyway. I remember thinking
that this could never happen in the UK. Finland, back in the last days
of the 2Mh century, was the first country to impose general use of
positive ID using smart cards. The Americans copied that experiment
initially in the major metropolitan areas to cope with the spreading
urban mayhem. Korea was first to legislate for the surgical
embedding of electronic ID chips in the hand at birth. Now, the
Securicor contract I signed this morning specifies that, in accordance
with the Interpolnet agreement. implants are needed on a global
level, and therefore in the UK as well. Their argument is irrefutable:
how can anybody police the global cybersphere if there are security
holes where people can log on without individual ID implants?'
He went on, 'An information bridge between product bar codes and
personal IDs was also inevltaMe. In the 1990s, we already knew that
the information about who purchases what was more valuable than
the profits. Even Orwell did not foresee a Big Brother that could
reconstruct everybody's life at that level of minutiae. Every purchase,