Invention of the Email and Bank Secrecy Act Essay

Invention of the Email and Bank Secrecy Act - Essay Example Global communication has become indispensable in human society as it determines the relationship between people belonging to different nations and cultures. An important mode of communication is the email. It is an electronic method of transmitting messages from one part of the globe to another part in a matter of seconds. It was in 1978 when a 14-year-old boy Shiva Ayyadurai created the first email. Email has definitely brought a new dimension to human communication and interaction. Its impact is even more prominent in the business world with email becoming the most preferred mode of communication. There has been a rapid growth of its popularity since its inception and this has been proved by a survey conducted in February 1998 at an Institution of Information Scientists. According to the survey, 60 participants booked a place by e-mail while the others booked either on the phone or have used fax. In business today, email is the most common process of communication with clients and off-site staff (Hill, 2005, pp.93-94). Its major advantage is that it is password protected which means the information on email can be accessible only by its user. It also saves time since messages sent via email takes under a second to get transmitted to the target email. The Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) was first introduced in the year 1970 by Congress in the U.S. in order to protect the global financial system from money-related crimes like money laundering and terrorist financing. Money laundering is the method by which illegally earned money is circulated and integrated into the financial system so as to make it appear clean. Basically, it is a system by which money received from one (illegal) source is appeared to have been received from another (legitimate) source.