Civic Voices: The ECASH Act Bill
CDS Faculty meet with U.S. Representatives and offer direction for policy design, privacy, and security at BU event
On October 4, 2022, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley and Congressman Stephen Lynch visited Boston University to discuss a bill they have introduced, called the ECASH Act. The bill is meant to address the needs of vulnerable populations who are often shut out of digital transactions. The event, which was the first in the CDS Civic Voices series, started with an introduction by Boston University President Robert A. Brown, followed by remarks from both representatives. Representatives and audience members then heard short presentations by BU faculty members who pursue research relevant to aspects of the bill: Allison McDonald, Gabe Kaptchuk, Mayank Varia, and Eran Tromer.
The ECASH Act directs the Secretary of the Treasury to develop and pilot digital dollar technologies that replicate the privacy-respecting features of physical cash, in order to promote greater financial inclusion, maximize consumer protection and data privacy, and advance U.S. efforts to develop and regulate digital assets. The full text of the bill can be found here.
Lynch introduced the bill after noting that the rapid worldwide trend toward cashless transactions could leave behind “a huge swath of the population,” especially the unbanked or underbanked, who are already unable to access financial services that many take for granted, as well as those in areas without reliable internet service.
We need a system “that can be used by people at the bottom of the economic ladder,” Lynch said. “We hope this bill will address many of the challenges we face as we move toward a cashless society.”
Pressley said the danger is that as our society becomes cashless, it will leave behind people for whom cash transactions, check cashing services, and payday lenders are more common than debit cards or online banking. She noted that 10 percent of Boston households are unbanked, an additional 20 percent are underbanked, with limited or no access to ATM and credit cards, lines of credit, and the like. And these problems tend to fall along racial lines.
“There are still many communities that rely on cash, that need cash to buy their groceries, cash to pay their bills,” Pressley said. “As legislators, it is our job to come up with solutions that promote financial inclusion while safeguarding privacy and consumer protection, because if we do not, we are failing our most vulnerable communities.”
Allison McDonald, a CDS assistant professor working on security, privacy, and human-computer interaction, talked about the importance of including the target community in the design process. Computer scientists are still overwhelmingly white, male, and “not low-income,” she said.
“Harm happens when technologists aren’t thinking about how people use technology in the real world,” McDonald said. “One way to avoid these problems is to make sure that the people most impacted have a seat at the table through the entire process, not just as a check at the far end.”
Gabe Kaptchuk is a College of Arts & Sciences research assistant professor of computer science and a research development fellow at BU’s Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. He discussed how easy it is for large data sets to get “hoovered up by surveillance systems” and ways that have been discovered to avoid that. He pointed to a process called secure multiparty computation, which allows transactions without either party revealing proprietary data.
Mayank Varia is a CDS associate professor of computing and data sciences and director of Hub for Civic Tech, the CDS initiative at the intersection of technology and the public interest. He discussed the importance of technology and the law working hand in hand.
And Eran Tromer laid out a series of steps Congress can take to help technologists create an ECASH that will work, including resolving ambiguities in laws and policies. Tromer, a computer scientist whose résumé includes stints at Columbia University and Tel Aviv University, is expected to begin faculty appointments at CAS in computer science and at the Questrom School of Business early next year.
More coverage from BU Today is available here.
A forum on responsible computing, data governance, and public policy, Civic Voices is an event series that brings legislators and civic leaders into a discussion with BU experts to examine technical issues that may inform, enable, or impact current public policy initiatives or debates. Civic Voices is co-sponsored by BU’s Office of Federal Relations.