Snippings

The Talmud also deals with identity in the context of reputation and social networks See Tractate Sanhedrin – folio 23a https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.23a.22?lang=bi As Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: Witnesses do not sign a document unless they know who is signing with them. One does not sign a document unless he recognizes that those signing with him are fit to bear witness.

Returning to the matter itself, Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: Witnesses do not sign a document unless they know who is signing with them. That is also taught in a baraita: This is what the scrupulous people of Jerusalem would do: They would not sign a document unless they knew who was signing with them, and they would not sit in judgment unless they knew who was sitting with them, and they would not join a meal unless they knew who was reclining, i.e., eating, with them.

The medieval scholar Rashi (1040-1105) explains that one needs to know one’s co-witness, because of the potential reputational damage to oneself of countersigning a document which is invalidated because of character defects of one’s co-signatory. The concern is that third parties will hear that the document has been rendered invalid and may assume that you are the cause (no smoke without fire).

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“Tales of lonely hearts who believe they have found their match, only to be ripped off by money-grabbing crooks are legion. And according to Grant Langston, chief executive of one of the leading global dating and relationship sites eHarmony, many cases are down to organised crime.”

eHarmony boss Grant Langston reveals the mantra for daters | This is Money

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“Deutsche Bank and partners Allianz, Axel Springer, Daimler and Postbank [will] work on a standard access procedure for online activities, with customers using a ‘master key’ for registration and identification across industries.”

Deutsche Bank backs pan-industry online identity platform

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…if banks were allowed to rely on the work other organizations have done to identify customers they could eliminate redundant paperwork and spare the customer a branch visit to open another account… But banks would need a lot to change before they would partake in this sort of outsourcing of identity provision. At the moment, they are clearly liable, under anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer rules, if they provide accounts to bad actors, wittingly or not.”

How liability stands in way of banks’ digital ID ambitions | American Banker

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“‘Banks are still placing too much responsibility on consumers to spot and protect themselves from sophisticated online scams. We’ve heard from many people who have lost life-changing amounts of money through bank transfer fraud, through no fault of their own, who are unlikely to get their money back from the banks involved.’”

RBS boss says customers are to blame if they’re defrauded | Daily Mail Online

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“For years, cards have accounted for the majority of retail spending by value, but 2016 was the first year they also accounted for more than 50% of all transactions. It is also the first time that debit cards have overtaken cash. They now account for 42.6% of all transactions, putting them a whisker ahead of notes and coins, which fell almost five percentage points to 42.3%.”

Cash no longer king as contactless payments soar in UK stores | Money | The Guardian

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In a trial with 10 other charities, it raised an average donation of £3.07, compared with £1 for cash

From NSPCC’s contactless face-to-face trial raised three times as much as cash | Third Sector

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At its height back in 2000, the U.S. cash equities trading desk at Goldman Sachs’s New York headquarters employed 600 traders, buying and selling stock on the orders of the investment bank’s large clients. Today there are just two equity traders left.

Automated trading programs have taken over the rest of the work, supported by 200 computer engineers.

From As Goldman Embraces Automation, Even the Masters of the Universe Are Threatened – MIT Technology Review

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The SEPA Instant Payments scheme goes live in November. 

The EPC’s SCT Inst scheme will enable interoperable euro credit transfers in SEPA for transactions of up to €15,000 initially to be available on the payee’s account within ten seconds.

From SEPA INSTANT CREDIT TRANSFERS ARRIVE – Payments Cards & Mobile

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UK home secretary Amber Rudd has called on messaging apps like WhatsApp to ditch end-to-end encryption, arguing that it aids terrorists. [She] said that “real people” don’t need the feature and that tech companies should do more to help the authorities deal with security threats.

From UK home secretary Amber Rudd says ‘real people’ don’t need end-to-end encryption | Business Insider

I am not privy to this level of decision making in the body politics, but I suppose that Amber’s plan is to make everyone else’s communications as vulnerable to hackers, pranksters and agents of foreign powers as MPs’ communications are.

Parliament has been hit by a “sustained and determined” cyber-attack by hackers attempting to gain access to MPs’ and their staffers’ email accounts… Fewer than 90 email accounts were compromised during the cyber attack on Westminster, sources told the Press Association.

From Cyber-attack on parliament leaves MPs unable to access emails | Politics | The Guardian

Why this is considered a good idea by the Home Secretary is entirely unclear. Presumably she thinks that if everyone can read everyone else’s messages then it will not only add to the gaiety of the nation but will render terrorists unable to communicate. How wrong can you be? If you make it against the law to send encrypted messages, then the terrorists will simply switch to encryption schemes that don’t look like encrypted messages. Surely a noted historian such as Amber is aware of