[Politech] Who's liable for "smart card" security breaches? You? [econ]

From: Declan McCullagh (declan@private)
Date: Thu Jul 07 2005 - 21:33:33 PDT


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	"the liability in case of fraud will shift from issuers to
acquirers"
Date: 	Wed, 06 Jul 2005 17:32:00 -0600
From: 	Tony Toews <tony@private>
To: 	Declan McCullagh <declan@private>



Declan

There was an interesting sentence in a press release with respect to
using smart cards in Canada.

http://www.oberthurusa.com/pdfs/2005/07-05%20Oberthur_Metaca_joint%20pressrelease_final.pdf

"With a market of approximately 55 million cards, it is anticipated that
issuers will start
deploying smart cards in 2006 with critical mass expected by 2010, after
which the
liability in case of fraud will shift from issuers to acquirers."

Who are acquirers?  Joe Consumer?   If so why would the liability
shift?   What if the systems have been broken by then?

I can appreciate that credit card and debit card fraud rates are quite
high and that newer, more secure technology is quite reasonable.
However assuming that the cardholder is automatically at fault bothers me.

Tony

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