From: an584514@anon.penet.fi
Date: Tue, 13 Aug 1996 03:04:25 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Rumors of death of Anguilla Data are greatly exagerated.
Message-ID: <9608121346.AB00628@anon.penet.fi>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Vince says:

>  And Anguilla is first and foremost a taxhaven.  But it tries hard to be a
>  very clean taxhaven (does not want drug money etc).  I think that "clean"
>  corporations operating here tax free is a potentially huge market.

This is an illusion.  There ain't no such thing as a clean corporation
operating in a clean tax haven.  Every overseas corp that is doing
something they can't do without interference back onshore, is running the
gauntlet.  Remember, its my moral choice as to whether its dirty, and
if I am sitting in some Washington quango office, and I decide its
dirty, then it is.  Plus its my job to fight it, and I'm not afraid
of a dirty fight.  And I got a list of contacts who've got friends
who've got favours to call in...

But you must know this, don't you follow the machinations that USG
pulls in the region to try and close down the arbitrages?

>  Anguilla and OIS are not the data haven of cypherpunks wet dreams. Neither
>  Anguilla nor I want "hit men for hire" advertising here. Sorry Tim.  And I
>  think the loss in clean business would outweigh any money from such by a
>  long shot.

Nobody's talking about things that every body agrees are no-go.
Shooting people is generally considered not acceptable.  So please
don't change the subject.

What we are talking about is a fairly harmless concept.  An obviously
"fake" passport that is designed to fool the supposedly ignorant peasant
terrorist when they wave grenades on the some flight from Miami, now
going to Havana.  It's a laughable concept, and one that most western
governments have sniffed at and not lifted one finger to even warn about.

OK, so there is a chance that a dumb clerk in a bank could be fooled.
Still, opening a bank account with such a person could be done any number
of ways.  It's equally possible to imagine the Honduras passport being
used to escape some sudaka warzone, without being shot for a gringo.
Remember PGP?  It was used for liberty, crime and freedom, all at once.

>  One simple example is that OIS was given a project Gutenberg CD-ROM and
>  may sell online copies of old books.  Some countries are extending
>  copyrights back further into the past.  Anguilla is not.  So we could sell
>  books that have expired copyrights in Anguilla but not expired in USA etc.
>  Think regulatory arbitrage.

Crap.  It's obvious what book your talking about, if you get Europeans
down there.  It's about as harmless, or harmful, as "kill the Queen"
rants, again its my moral choice.  If a phone call from your lawyer
causes such good responses, then there is no problem about getting
this one made out-of-stock.  Do you have a lot of tourists then
from *that* place?  What's the GDP take for the holiday trade anyway?

>  Taxhavens are a huge and well understood market.  Datahavens are still
>  new. Not counting gambling, they may only be $0/year rounded to the
>  nearest million.

The distinction is irrelevant.  What are you going to do to protect
my business?  Now I know.  SFA.  I may be asking you for data
protection, but my profits, which (might) pay you, come from a
long line of other businesses.  We're not all geeks.

Tim makes good points, especially as he is not (as far as I can
see) in the trade.  When my company does business with such
a jurisdiction, we look for the list of things allowed and the list
of no-nos (which we respect).  Then we look at the history of how that
country stand up to its word.  One thing is what they say, then
another is what they do.  It's surprising how easy it is to see
just how much a place really wants your business for the long run.

I will say this, it ain't really your fault that this happened.
The webshop was too bright, too blatent.  He talked to toublesome
scam reporters.  That sort of thing is going to bring in trouble.
Softly softly catchee monkey is what is needed.

Then when the phone rang my guess is it all happened to quickly.
You win some you lose some.  Lets not make a bad story get worse.

Even though this is not a happy post (Anguilla was on our list)
we still would like you to suceed.  Our advice, worth what you
paid, is don't advertise this event, one bad storm doesnt sink
a ship.  Take a look at all your webpages and tone down the
noisy ones.  Tell them to camoflage their location, no pun intended.

Then, get down to your lawyers office and sit down over a beer
and work out how your going to handle this thing next time.
Properly.

Publish (quietly but definatively) your list of no-nos (ok,
that's already said).  Think about what new shops want to do
and talk it over with your man down at the bar (so you can
predict the attacks).  Learn some negotiating skills, soften
the blow from both ends.  Nothing I'm sure you hadn't thought of.

Cheers,
sorry for anonymity, but as I say, its softly softly in this game.
Wish you luck.
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