Word: passport
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...function as such a decade ago. But while the south has been torn apart by incessant violence ever since and is only now attempting to move beyond government by the ubiquitous warlords, Somaliland has forged a more peaceful path. It has created its own government, and issued currency and passports. Not that a Somaliland passport will get you anywhere - although a declaration of independence from Somalia was supported by 90 percent of voters in a recent referendum, no other country recognizes the move. The Somalilanders maintain they were always separate from, and different to, their southern cousins. Moreover, they insist...
...Passport has Microsoft's competitors worried that Gates & Co. want to use it to collect a fee on virtually every online consumer transaction. AOL has charged that Passport is Microsoft's attempt to gain a "choke point" on e-commerce...
...idea is so bad, why is AOL going down the same road? Reports have surfaced that it may be considering releasing its own Passport-style ID-verification and payment system, called Magic Carpet. AOL made a $100 million investment in Amazon.com last week in what may be an attempt to draw on the e-commerce giant's expertise in creating payment systems...
Microsoft insists that the complaints about Passport are overblown. The only information it collects from Starbucks buyers, it says, are e-mail address, city and state, and it promises not to turn that data over to third parties. Microsoft insists it never asked Starbucks.com to make it an exclusive payment option. "It's totally at the discretion of the participants to decide what makes most sense for their business," says Microsoft spokesman Adam Sohn...
Starbucks says its Passport-only policy is being done on a "test basis" and will be re-evaluated in the early fall. The company will then consider whether to keep the exclusive arrangement, adopt multiple registration plans (which eBay announced last week) or develop a system with even greater privacy protections--one in which private data would be discarded when a transaction is completed...