From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 95 22:53:32 PST
To: bmorris@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Anonymous payment scheme
Message-ID: <9501040637.AA11348@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> HH> So, you may be able to have a form of anonymity from the person you ar
> HH> transacting with, but I don't think you can be anonymous from the bank
> HH> and from the government.  And personally, I am more concerned about th
> With a debit card you can't be anonymous, because your money resides in
> the bank.  With digital cash, and the ability to transfer money to
> another digital cash card via phone lines, I don't see how they can
> successfully trace everything.  They will try, no doubt.

I thought the origination of this thread was a hypothetical proposal
to start a Cypherpunks Bank which would join Visa and issue debit cards;
they could be started for cash, under pseudonyms, and would expire
when they ran dry.  So you and your 10,000 closest friends could
call yourselves anything you want, and the merchant would know that
Johnny Cash Foobar buys a lot of pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment, 
but doesn't know who he is.  The bank's not paying interest, so they
probably don't need SSNs until the next round of privacy-prevention laws,
and they're not using them as credit-validation tools since they're
only issuing debit cards to cash customers anyway.  Meanwhile,
it gets to hire lots of lawyers, pay Visa commissions,
and collect interest on the float.  And if you get tired of being
Johnny Cash Foobar, or don't like having your purchases correlated,
John Hancock's card can buy the motorboats and Joe Toshiba's
can pay for the precision machine tools...

The standard merchant contract with Visa/Mastercharge used to forbid
merchants from asking for additional ID unless they suspected fraud;
I think some states have made laws about this as well.

	Bill