From: "David K. Merriman" <merriman@arn.net>
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 1995 19:12:24 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: ecash remailer
Message-ID: <199511010018.SAA06259@arnet.arn.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>Hal writes:
>[suggesting a problem with Ed the Currency Cleaner]
>> What about this, though: Alice did not mean to pay Bob, but rather
>> Charlie, and Bob stole the coins.  He launders them through Ed's
>> service.  Charlie never got the cash, and Alice complains to the bank
>> that the coins were stolen.  The bank says, fine, we can identify the
>> perpetrator, let's see... it's Ed.  Ed is now charged with theft and
>> has an expensive and uncertain legal experience ahead of him.
>
>Jumping in hastily:
>
>It seems to me that Ed faces a larger problem if the above scenario turns
>out to be a viable attack. Consider the following sequence: Alice and
>Charlie decide to get some (payee-anonymous) currency laundromat in hot 
>water. Alice (payer-anonymously) washes some coins at the laundromat.
>Con-man Charlie claims he didn't get paid for some fictional transaction with
>Alice. Alice complains to the bank, and the rest proceeds as before. The
>Alice-frames-Ed situation is functionally equivalent to the Bob-robs-Charlie
>situation from the bank's perspective.
>

Wouldn't the ability to have the bank prove that the coins were 'cashed'
make this all null and void? The only way this would work would be if
Charlie is willing to completely forego cashing in the coins, *ever*. Should
he cash them in later, Ed would seem to have grounds for suspicion/complain.

Dave Merriman
This is a test (3 UUE lines) of the unconstitutional ITAR - 1/713th
of the PGP executable. See below for getting YOUR chunk! 
------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [015/713] -------------------
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M8H,),S$8G>&.WP(8IRA`-M['+`Q%&_C"">5-F%LX@<_Q$;*P'',Q$Z/AA[8M
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for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/
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