New York regulates credit card use

Citibank Bans Credit Cards From Use in Web Gambling , New York Times, June 15, 2002
By MATT RICHTEL

"Citibank said yesterday that it had agreed to block use of its credit cards for Internet gambling transactions. The decision came after regulators from New York State told Citibank that it could face criminal prosecution for aiding in the promotion of online gambling, which is illegal in the state.
Citibank joins a handful of other major credit card issuers, including ProvidianBank, that have already said they will try to block use of their cards for Internet gambling. Citibank, with 33 million Visa and MasterCard holders, is the nation's largest credit card issuer."

Other interesting notes in the article:

1.) The crackdown by credit card companies on online gambling is threatening the viability of the industry, with many cojmpanies finding their profits cut and others going out of business.

2.) Citibank will pay $400,000 to non-profit agencies that counsel compulsive gamblers.

Question:

Would the states be as zealous at cracking down on this issue if they were not making their own money from lotteries?

Trading Privacy for Convenience?

Fingerprint IDs raise privacy issues CNN.com Law Center
June 2, 2002

"Conrad is one of the 2,000-plus customers of a Thriftway grocery store in West Seattle who signed up in a pilot program run by Oakland, California-based Indivos Corp. that links customers' fingerprints with their credit or debit cards, allowing them to buy groceries by simply running a finger over a scanner."

As much of the commentary in the article indicates, these are completely uncharted waters. It is not clear, for example, who owns the fingerprint, whether that information can be sold if the company changes hands. There are, as yet, no federal regulations on these issues.

"'With most of these applications there's an interesting starting point, and then there are new applications and pretty soon you have full force Big Brother watching over you,' said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public-interest research group."