We are planning to work during the next few weeks on the question of liabilities and license. Everybody realises that cryptographic technology will be commercialised, but there is tremendous resistance against allowing good cryptographic methods to be available to the public. Concerning liability, it is interesting to observe that the legal community has been late to realise what is happening in telematics. In fact, these are not new issues, and the question of across-border responsibility has already been known for some time. The existing law still applies, but there has been no practice nor much experience so far in these situations.
Cost is a key issue.
We are witnessing a dramatic change in technology. Many services which were until now separated are being progressively unified. Thanks to standards, systems are becoming more open and inter-operable. Telecommunications and networking are converging to become a single telecomputing field. In this context, it is important to avoid the pitfall of building dedicated infrastructures for specific applications.