From: "James O'Toole" <otoole@lcs.mit.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 10:17:38 +0800
To: "'unicorn@schloss.li>
Subject: RE: The Continued Attack on Cash (Was: "The Right of Anonymity"...)
Message-ID: <01BD301E.4FCC8EC0@slip-james.lcs.mit.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




Tim,

Maintaining anonymity in the face of the regulatory framework is certain to be difficult, and anything difficult is usually rare, expensive, or both.

An interesting question about the Privacy Card product is whether the social pressure against it is strong enough to defeat its privacy whenever the product is well advertised.  In other words, will a privacy product survive in spite of its own publicity in our current environment, or can privacy products only exist when their own existence is relatively unknown.  This is interesting because in the latter case, we have only a very very weak form of privacy/anonymity because it is hard to be sure how much privacy backs a product whose very existence is semi-secret.

Maybe we should consider putting up, and encouraging existing privacy-enhanced institutions to put up, challenge prizes based on privacy/anonymity preservation.  Just as we've seen prizes set for the cracking of specific composites and encrypted messages, we could ask Credit Suisse to put $1M in an escrow account at their main branch (Zurich?).  This escrow account would be a numbered account held by a trustee selected by the bank.  Let's say they wire $1000 per week to RSA Data Security in California, or to EFF.ORG, or to me, for that matter, and I wire it back.  I publish the full text of any documentation I can get from my bank account (an empty account I would maintain for this anonymity challenge).  Credit Suisse would promise to release the contents of the account to the first person to arrive at their main branch and present the name of the trustee.

That's not a very creative challenge...this could use more thought.

The point is that as far as I know, we haven't yet seen any really solid rewards placed to validate, advertise, or demonstrate the weakness of, well-known privacy-enhanced financial systems.  I don't even know that Digicash, which would be another logical sponsor, has put up such a challenge.  Have they?

  --Jim


----------
From: 	Tim May[SMTP:tcmay@got.net]
Sent: 	Monday, February 02, 1998 1:18 PM
To: 	Black Unicorn
Cc: 	rotenberg@epic.org; nym@vorlon.mit.edu; dcsb@ai.mit.edu; cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: 	Re: The Continued Attack on Cash (Was: "The Right of Anonymity"...)

At 10:51 PM -0800 2/1/98, Black Unicorn wrote:
>Mr. May said:
>
>>Suffice it to say that I find nearly all cases where someone is "demanding"
>>personal information to be cases where the government has required them to,
>>for various unseemly purposes, or in cases where credit is being arranged.
>
>Of late I tried to pay off a rather large American Express bill.
>
>Suddenly, AMEX won't take cash in excess of $1,000 in any single billing
>period (30 days).  The large sign on the wall indicated the substance of
....


It's worth noting (again) that a very simple technological/social solution
to the "credit card companies have records on people" problem, the one
often cited by "privacy law advocates" as the reason for a Data Privacy
Act, is easily found.

Namely, remove any impediments to the issuance of credit or debit cards
unlinkable to the True Name of a user.  A card issuer could feature this as
a Privacy Card, either backed by transfers of backing capital to accounts,
or using Chaum-style methods.

This is fully feasible using Chaumian credential-revealing mechanisms. (Cf.
Chaum's seminal "Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete," in
Communications of the ACM, November 1985. Updated a few times and available
in reprints or other places. Try search engines for latest locations.)

However, the trends are in just the opposite direction, as both Black
Unicorn and Bill Stewart have noted in this thread. Between the War on
Drugs, the laws about money laundering, the fears of tax evasion, and the
general burrowcrat desire to record the movements and actions of
citizen-units, such a Privacy Card would be frowned-upon.

Various roadblocks, ranging from "know your customer" restrictions on banks
to anti-money-laundering laws, would be thrown up to stop any such Privacy
Card.

The real solution is easy.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."




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