From: Bryce Wilcox <wilcoxb@nagina.cs.colorado.edu>
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 95 18:32:19 PDT
To: shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green)
Subject: Re: Forgery, bills, and the Four Horsemen (Articles and Comment)
In-Reply-To: <v02120d03ac7260cb02e3@[192.0.2.1]>
Message-ID: <199509060132.TAA04511@nagina.cs.colorado.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> This is unnecessary, since there is no "true" ecash. DigiCash's ecash in
> its current form, the only version David Chaum is willing to licenese, is
> fully traceable. Popular Cypherpunk's myths nonwithstanding.
> 
> First, the recipient of funds is non-anonymous by design. Second, any payer
> can trivialy make the recipient of a ecash note known by revealing the
> blinding factor. For purposed of lawenforcement, DigiCash's ecash in no
> more secure than if the (insert horseman here) billed his fees to a credit
> card.


I'm sorry-- what do you mean by "the recipient of funds is non-anonymous"?  
I cannot envision any centralized currency system in which a user's funds
were *not* known to the bank!


Secondly, there is a tremendous difference between a person being able to
identify you as the recipient of their money (which they can pretty much do
anyway, with less surety, just by saying "That's him!  He's the one I gave
it to!") and a third party such as the bank or a government being able to
monitor all your transactions.  For such an organization to perform that feat
on a DigiCash user they would need the cooperation of all of the people with
whom he exchanges currency, and if they have that, then cryptography seems
irrelevant.  :-)


I hope I'm not missing anything here.


Regards,

Bryce

signatures follow:


                                 +                                           
    public key on keyservers     /.       island Life in a chaos sea         
    or via finger 0x617c6db9     /             bryce.wilcox@colorado.edu     
                                 ---*                                     

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