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30-12-2011 04:48 Download high quality version: bit.ly Description: events.ccc.de peio: Electronic money: The road to Bitcoin and a glimpse forward How the e-money systems can be made better The proposed talk provides a definition of the problem of creating e-money and after a review of the state of the art points out possible solutions and proposes questions for discussion for the properties of electronic money system.

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28c3: Electronic money: The road to Bitcoin and a glimpse forward - Video

Westpac Banking Corporation is poised to axe more than 400 jobs and send another 150 offshore in the latest round of job cuts at the big banks.

Australia's second biggest bank on Thursday briefed workers about the 410 job cuts and positions it will relocate to India as part of a group-wide restructure.

"We are commencing consultation with a number of our employees around changes to Westpac," a Westpac spokeswoman said.

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) told AAP 150 positions would be moved to Bangalore, India, and it feared more cuts were on the cards.

The roles affected are mostly back office, non-executive support roles, but there will be a decline in the bank's overall standard of customer service, FSU national secretary Leon Carter said.

"They're saying this will be the most significant announcement they'll make this year but there's no guarantee that it's the last one," Mr Carter said.

"Westpac continues to make a multi billion-dollar profit and has the capacity, and we say the obligation, to invest in and protect Australian jobs not continue to sacrifice them on the alter of profit."

Westpac's acting head of Australian financial services Peter Hanlon told The Australian's website that the cuts were necessary due to the slowdown in business and consumer activity, as well as the lull in housing credit demand.

The bank will shift 150 jobs to its third party provider in Bangalore, along with 28 IT management roles in its wholly owned BT Financial Group and Westpac Institutional Bank.

Workers in India are usually paid between one-third and a half the wage of Australian workers in comparable jobs.

Westpac also is reviewing all business units excluding its New Zealand operations.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said that despite the job cuts at Westpac, Australia's financial services sector had a bright future.

Ms Gillard said the growing middle class in China, India and other regional countries would ensure a strong future for financial services.

"That burgeoning new middle class will want sophisticated financial services that can be provided by us right here in Australia," she told reporters in Melbourne.

Westpac's job cuts came amid cuts at other banks.

Earlier this week Suncorp Group said it would shift 77 jobs offshore to Bangalore, while ANZ Banking Group in January announced 131 employees in Victoria would lose their jobs.

Several hundred more jobs will be shed from the Melbourne-based lender in the next six months, ANZ's chief of Australian operations Phil Chronican said at the time.

Westpac posted a 10 per cent jump in annual net profit to $6.99 billion in fiscal 2011, with salaries and other staff expenses up three per cent on a year earlier.

It also made 302 roles redundant through 10 restructures in 2011, according to FSU figures.

Westpac's permanent headcount stood at 33,898 at September 30, 2011, down 1,157 from a year earlier.

Another 3,908 temporary workers were employed, along with 94 employees working on the integration of Westpac and St George Bank.

That took the bank's total headcount to 37,712, a drop of 767 on a year earlier.

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Westpac cuts 410 jobs, sends 150 to India

29-09-2011 07:31 Visit This site for a complimentary ebook that explains it all tinyurl.com Alessio Rastani went on a UK news channel on Monday to discuss where stock markets were heading. By Tuesday he was an Internet sensation. Was it that he said, as someone who bets against markets rising, that he "goes to bed every night dreaming of a recession?" Was it that he said investment bank Goldman Sachs ruled the world and not governments? Or was it that bloggers started to ask if he was just a "fake trader" who duped the media?

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PODCAST of Alessio Rastani on the BBC World Service Radio FULL VERSION - Part 1 of 2 - Video

The Hawaii politician behind a proposed Internet tracking law acknowledged defeat today, saying that he recommends "that we kill this bill" this year.

State Representative John Mizuno, the lead sponsor of H.B. 2288 (PDF), bowed to what he described as an "incredible" national outcry that arose after a CNET article last week. His proposal would have required virtual dossiers to be compiled on state residents: two years' worth of their Internet browsing.

John Mizuno, Dem. state legislator in Hawaii and a sponsor of the bill, wanted to require virtual dossiers to be compiled on state residents: two years' worth of their Internet browsing.

(Credit: Hawaii.gov)

"It's generated a lot of national attention," Mizuno, a Democrat from Oahu, told CNET this afternoon. "I've taken into consideration the thousands of e-mails (which were often) colorful and passionate, which is absolutely fine... This bill just isn't ready. It needs a lot of work."

What would have normally been a routine committee hearing last week on H.B. 2288 was marked by a broad outcry against Mizuno's legislation -- an echo of the recent protests over the Stop Online Piracy Act -- which went further than other data retention proposals to date. Members of Hawaii's Internet community showed up to warn against the legislation, while industry representatives and groups including the ACLU wrote letters (PDF) opposing it.

H.B. 2288 says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.

Mizuno said he believes that approach -- recording both the origin and destination Internet address of Aloha State residents -- is valuable and plans to return to it in 2013.

Police would then have a record of pedophiles "going after the kids, trolling for the kids," he said. "I think both would be very strong pieces of evidence if there's going to be a criminal proceeding."

"While I respect Rep. Mizuno's attempt to assist law enforcement in catching dangerous criminals, his approach is dangerously flawed," Daniel Leuck, chief executive of Honolulu-based software design boutique Ikayzo, told CNET this afternoon. "There is no question that having two years of browsing history for every resident would make it easier for law enforcement. So would warrantless searches of people's homes."

Aryn Nakaoka, president of Hawaii Internet provider Lava.net, who reassured customers last week that his company will "never" store customer data, says he's happy to hear that H.B. 2288 has been withdrawn. Though even if it became law, he said, you wouldn't be able to know what a criminal was doing without "looking at their content or subpoenaing websites which would be the next and very scary step of content monitoring.

Last summer, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) managed to persuade a divided committee in the U.S. House of Representatives to approve his data retention proposal, which doesn't go nearly as far as Hawaii's. (Smith, currently Hollywood's favorite Republican, has become better known as the author of SOPA.)

Mizuno's proposal specified no privacy protections, such as placing restrictions on what Internet providers can do with this information (like selling user profiles to advertisers) or requiring that police obtain a court order before perusing the virtual dossiers of Hawaiian citizens. Also absent were security requirements such as mandating the use of encryption.

Because the wording was so broad and applies to any company that "provides access to the Internet," Mizuno's legislation could sweep in far more than AT&T, Verizon, and Hawaii's local Internet providers. It could also impose sweeping new requirements on coffee shops, bookstores, and hotels frequented by the over 6 million tourists who visit the islands each year.

NetChoice, a trade association in Washington, D.C. that counts eBay, Facebook, and Yahoo as members, sent a letter (PDF) to the state legislature warning that H.B. 2288's data collection requirements "could be misused in lawsuits," including in divorce cases.

Even the Justice Department has only lobbied the U.S. Congress to record Internet Protocol addresses assigned to individuals--users' origin IP address, in other words. It hasn't publicly demanded that companies record the destination IP addresses as well.

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Hawaii politico behind Internet dossier bill nixes idea

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A city panel in the U.S. capital voted on Wednesday to repeal a first-in-the-nation Internet gambling law for Washington, D.C., a spokeswoman said.

Support for online gambling had dried up as details surfaced about the roundabout way a contract was awarded to Greece's Intralot, the District of Columbia's lottery operator.

Stepping back from the online project, the city council's Finance Committee voted 3-2 to repeal a 2010 law that would have allowed it, said Denise Tolliver, chief of staff for Councilman Phil Mendelson, a sponsor of the bill.

The full 12-member council will hold the first of two votes on repeal on Tuesday, she said.

"They may start over. I don't think they are that far yet," Tolliver said.

Internet gambling received a blow this week when Mayor Vincent Gray, who has generally supported the plan, backed repeal.

Resistance to the plan had grown as details surfaced about how the law came about. Internet gambling was added to the city's lottery contract months after the contract passed a 2009 council vote. It was legalized through a 2010 spending bill.

No date had been set for launch. Washington would have been the first U.S. jurisdiction to have its own site dedicated to games such as online poker and blackjack.

Gray and other supporters had argued that the District of Columbia needed millions of dollars in revenues from online gambling. But that argument was weakened with the city's announcement in December that revenue in the current fiscal year was expected to top forecasts by $42 million.

Byron Boothe, Intralot's vice president for government affairs, said Washington "was really leading the (online gambling) charge and obviously they dropped the baton."

He said it would be difficult for the District of Columbia to revive the online gambling initiative since congressional sentiment has swung against state or local government oversight in favor of federal regulation.

A number of states are looking at Internet gambling, including Illinois, New York and Hawaii, he said. Nevada's Gaming Commission last year passed a framework to regulate online poker.

(Reporting By Ian Simpson; Editing by Cynthia Johnston)

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Washington D.C. steps back from Internet gambling launch