SWIFT and every other large utility used for finance is monitored and controlled by status quo parties of interest. If and when information becomes critical for the hiding of interested parties or the fabrication of information is required then it is done from the inside out with not external trail to smudge. Identity control is the ultimate goal so that the refined despots of the world can dominate, ideas, education, industrial production, consumer spending habits, and all sorts of interesting things. Early in the last century transportation and the control of it became the critical component that allowed Standard Oil do dominant that burgeoning industry. SWIFT, DTC, and other utility organs are the transportation hubs of modern commerce and their control insures that parents that send their children to selective prepartory institution have a legacy of power to hand down. The goose that laid the golden egg called electronic transfer is held together by trust but its not our trust they require its theirs and this established separate class will when they choose to undo all that stand in their way.

I just stumbled across this site, and I'm trying to decide if it's worth my time. You purport to be some kind of expert on cryptography, yet you are unable to even configure SSL (https) properly for your site, and even worse, you seem to have no clue when it actually makes sense to use cryptography at all.

In other words, I access this site through the www.financialcryptography.com domain with a regular non-encrypted connection, yet my browser pops up an invalid certificate for www2.futureware.at?

First, if you need to have secure connections to your site for some reason, get a properly signed certificate for your proper domain.

Second, I looked at your source to see what on earth you need secure connections for, and it's only for the god damn stylesheet. Who the hell uses a normal connection for the content, yet an encrypted one for the stylesheet? It only causes an "invalid certificate" pop-up each time I open your site, with no discernible benefit whatsoever.

And I'm supposed to trust your opinion on security and cryptography issues?

The content does seem interesting to be sure, but this level of cryptography misuse is simply pathetic, and casts a huge shadow on your credibility.

Has there been progress on the prosecution of SWIFT under privacy laws? The last thing I read was from the Belgium privacy commission here http://cryptome.org/bepc-swift.htm