ECRIM improvements

1 files changed, 80 insertions, 69 deletions

diff --git a/summary/taler.tex b/summary/taler.tex
index ea77f60..d75362f 100644
--- a/summary/taler.tex
+++ b/summary/taler.tex
@@ -25,85 +25,96 @@
 % mention asymmetry
 % used to read too much like a manifesto
 % bring in the news distribution stuff
+% internet of things: privacy concerns
 
-\emph{Teaser:  
-% FIXME
-The internet urgently needs a new payment system
-to supplant the crumbling ad industry.
-Our goal is to provide a secure digital payment system for contemporary
-liberal societies as balances the state's need for monetary control with
-the citizen's needs for private economic activity.
-}
+%\emph{Teaser:  
+%The internet urgently needs a new payment system to supplant the crumbling ad
+%industry as a revenue source for independent journalists, bloggers and other
+%content creators.
+%}
+
+
+
+%\begin{center}
+%\includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{anonymous.png}
+%\end{center}
 
 GNU Taler is a new digital payment system currently under development at INRIA.
 It aims to strike a balance between radically decentralized technologies such
-as Bitcoin and traditional payment methods while satisfying stricter ethical
+as Bitcoin and traditional payment methods, while satisfying stricter ethical
 requirements such as customer privacy, taxation of merchants and environmental
 consciousness through efficiency.  We also address micropayments, which are
 infeasable with currently used payment systems due to high transaction costs.
 
-Unlike many recent developments in the field of privacy-preserving payments,
-GNU Taler is not based on blockchain technology, but on Chaum-style digital
-payments with additional constructions based on elliptic curves.  Our work
-addresses practical problems that previous incarnations of Chaum-style digital
-payments suffered from.  The system is entirely composed of free software
-components, which facilitates easier adoption, standardization and community
-involvement.
-
-\begin{center}
-%\includegraphics[width=0.3\textwidth]{anonymous.png}
-\end{center}
-
-Addressing the problem of micropayments is urgent: ad-blocking technology is
-eroding advertising as a substitute for micropayments, and the Big Data
-business model where citizens pay with their private information hastens our
-society's regression towards post-democracy~\cite{rms2013democracy}.
-
-In Taler, the customer who pays is not required to disclose private
-information to make payments, while the merchant's income is visible
-to the state and thus taxable.  {\em Taxable} merely means that the
-state can obtain the necessary information about the contract to levy
-common forms of income, sales or value-added taxes, not that the
-system imposes any particular tax code.  When a customer
-pays he uses unlinkable digital coins to sign a contract with the
-merchant. The contract is proposed by the merchant and is supposed to
-contain all of the information required for taxation -- which
-typically excludes the identity of the customer.  Later, the state can
-obtain the contract by following a chain of cryptographic tokens,
-starting from a token in the wire transfer from the Taler payment
-system operator to the merchant.  The payment system operator only
-learns the total value of a contract, but no further details about the
-contract.  The payment system operator also learns who the issuer of
-the digital coins was; beyond this, the payment process itself reveals
-no further information about the identity of the customer.
-
-Customers and merchants will be able to easily adapt their existing
-mental models and technical infrastructure to Taler, as Taler
-resembles credit cards in business logic, business model and in
-particular and the use of existing currencies.  In contrast, Bitcoin's
-payment models fail to match common expectations, be it in terms of
-performance, durability, security, or privacy.
-
-To pay with Taler, customers need to install an electronic wallet.
-Once such a wallet is present, the fact that the user does not have to
-authenticate to pay fundamentally improves usability.  We already see
-today that electronic wallets like GooglePay are being deployed to
-simplify payments online. However, the dominant players mostly
-simplify credit card transactions without actually improving privacy
-or security for citizens.  GNU Taler is privacy-preserving free
-software and both technically and legally designed to protect the
-interests of its users.
-% This is WAY, WAY too strong ...
-A key question for the future of our society
-is thus whether digital wallets will serve citizens and respect their
-sovereignty, or serve to reinforce the panopticon in the Reich of Big
-Data corporations.
-
-One of our future research directions is to investigate Taler to facilitate
-censorship-resistant news distribution in decentralized social networks.
+Addressing the problem of micropayments is urgent. The overwhelming majority of
+online journalists, bloggers and content creators currently depend on
+advertisement revenue for their income.  The recent surge of ad-blocking
+technology is threatening to destroy this primary source of income for many
+independent online journalists and bloggers.  Furthermore the existing
+advertisement industry is based on the Big Data business model, and users do
+not only pay with their attention but also with private information about their
+behavior. This threatens to move our society towards
+post-democracy~\cite{rms2013democracy}.  Our goal is to empower consumers and
+content creators by giving the choice to opt for micropayments instead of
+advertisements.
+
+Unlike many recent developments in the field of privacy-preserving online
+payments, GNU Taler is not based on blockchain technology, but on Chaum-style
+digital payments with additional constructions based on elliptic curve
+cryptography.  Our work addresses practical problems that previous incarnations
+of Chaum-style digital payments suffered from.  The system is entirely composed
+of free software components, which facilitates easier adoption, standardization
+and community involvement.
+
+From the consumer's perspective, Taler's payment model comes closer to the
+expectations one has when paying with cash than with credit cards.  Customers
+do not need to authenticate themselves with personally identifying information
+to the merchant or the payment processor.  Instead individual payments are
+authorized locally on the customer's computing device.  This rules out a number
+of security issues associated with identity theft.  We expect that this will
+also lower the barrier for online transactions due to the lower risk for the
+customer.  With current payment solutions, the risk of identity theft
+accumulates with every payment being made.  With our payment system, the only
+risk involved with each individual payment is the amount being payed for that
+single transaction.
+
+
+In Taler, the paying customer is only required to disclose minimal private
+information (as required by local law), while the merchant's transactions are
+completely transparent to the state and thus taxable.  Taxable merely means
+that the state can obtain the necessary information about the contract to levy
+common forms of income, sales or value-added taxes, not that the system imposes
+any particular tax code.  When a customer pays he uses unlinkable digital
+payment tokens to sign a contract with the merchant. The contract is proposed
+by the merchant and is supposed to contain all of the information required for
+taxation -- which typically excludes the identity of the customer.  Later, the
+state can obtain the contract by following a chain of cryptographic tokens,
+starting from a token in the wire transfer from the Taler payment system
+operator to the merchant.  The payment system operator only learns the total
+value of a contract, but no further details about the contract.  The payment
+system operator also learns who the issuer of the digital payment tokens was;
+beyond this, the payment process itself reveals no further information about
+the identity of the customer.  
+
+To pay with GNU Taler, customers need to install an electronic wallet on their
+computing device.  Once such a wallet is present, the fact that the user does
+not have to authenticate to pay fundamentally improves usability.  We already
+see today that electronic wallets like GooglePay are being deployed to simplify
+payments online. However, the dominant players mostly simplify credit card
+transactions without actually improving privacy or security for citizens.  GNU
+Taler is privacy-preserving free software and both technically and legally
+designed to protect the interests of its users.
+
+We plan to use Taler as the basis for future research that investigates
+censorship-resistant news distribution in decentralized social networks.  In
+addition to online payments, we eventually want to adapt GNU Taler to mobile
+payments with NFC-enabled devices.  We hope that mobile Taler payments will
+further the proliferation of local currencies (such as Abeille in France),
+which are currently popular in parts of Europe, but suffer from practical
+problems such as easy counterfeiting and the limitation to physical coupons.
 
 GNU Taler was started at TU Munich in April 2014 and is now being coordinated
-by the TAMIS team\footnote{\url{https://www.inria.fr/en/teams/tamis}} at Inria
+by the TAMIS team\footnote{\url{https://www.inria.fr/en/teams/tamis}} at INRIA
 Rennes, with contributions from the free software community at large and the
 GNUnet project\footnote{\url{https://gnunet.org/}} in particular.  The initial
 research is being funded by ARED and the Renewable Freedom