December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by stevenw＠iglou.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 2:30 AM 8/22/95, Timothy C. May wrote: >> (An important point is that >>in a cash economy, identity is almost irrelevant. It's only in non-cash, or >>"account-based," economy that True Names are demanded. Lots of interesting >>issues to discuss here, which I won't now.) [Lots of interesting discussion deleted] >Everyone trusts their transactions because of the difficulty of forging >certificates. That means that once again, a certificate has it's own >inherent worth. It speaks for itself, and when it changes hands, the trade >is, as Eric Hughes says, "immediately and finally" cleared and settled. >The overhead of keeping books is gone, at least for the trading parties, >and especially for the clearing houses, who, like exchanges, just kind of >disappear, along with any way to regulate them. Somewhere, Joe Kennedy, >the first Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Comission, is probably >either crying his eyes out or laughing his head off, depending on your >interpretation of his role in regulatory history. In such a system, where does credit come in? If I have a certificate that is worth X, then does the recipient know that it's from my "credit card"? How do I obtain credit, and in what form does it exist? Furthermore, how do we assess the value of real physical things in a system like this? -- Steven Weller <Windsor Consulting Group> +1 502 454 0054 (voice) OS-9 Consultancy and Software +1 502 451 5935 (fax) Finger for public key 00 02 3C 2F 83 76 D3 77 2A 95 E8 90 94 9A 9D 74 http://iglou.com/windsorgrp stevenw(a)iglou.com or realtime(a)well.sf.ca.us

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Re: The End of the Ecash Trial?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:35 PM 8/23/95, Nathan Loofbourrow wrote: >I have yet to see a date, but Digicash states several times in their >press releases that Cyberbucks are only a trial currency, and that at >some point in the future the trial will come to an end. We've talked about this a little bit on ecm. Someone from Digicash is on record there as saying that trading in c$ came as a complete surprise. The hitch about continuing to honor c$ is that there needs to be a bank. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the current system does work on an offline, peer-to-peer basis. Nonetheless, ocassionally, you still need to verify that the money hasn't been double spent, and for that you need a bank. The problem with being a bank is the price of the bank software, which is where David Chaum and Co. want make their money. Thus, the last price I got (offhand) from David on the phone a year ago was $250k + 10% of net profits. Given the cost of hardware, people, lawyers, and if you actually back the certificates with dollars in a bank of deposit (not being what we want do to here, admittedly) bankers, and more lawyers. Could add up to a mulitmillion dollar proposition. Of course, it could be done with donated professional time, bandwidth, hardware and donated bank software from Digicash. But it's hard to see that happening from here... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: is there...
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:56 PM 8/23/95, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Is there an online version of Raph's anonymous remailer list for FTP >or on the web? I suddenly need to give it to someone. > >.pm http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html --D. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com http://wfmu.org/~davem

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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PGPfone Release is coming soon!
by jis＠mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- As you may have seen, the news media has picked up on the upcoming PGPfone release. This note is to let you know that we at MIT are working with Phil Zimmermann and the PGPfone team to distribute PGPfone from MIT. We expect to have a *BETA* test version (Macintosh Only) of PGPfone available shortly. We will distribute PGPfone via anonymous FTP from net-dist.mit.edu. Look in the /pub/PGPfone directory (which doesn't yet exist). We will also be distributing PGP via the World Wide Web from: http://web.mit.edu/network/pgpfone This "Home" page already exists, but doens't have the distribution yet. Feel free to check it periodically, as it will be changed as soon as the distribution is ready. -Jeff -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMDv4lMUtR20Nv5BtAQEyFAP+J3oFHuwKiOu56CtYSvA7WJUGgZg37zRj QPmMfnOD5/9nGUXGsQjs3NTMwV4Y+de4mM3Qxi/O/G0ID1aGod8pPbDkyh6wG594 FVWLu6c1E7pZcge1/Iv9nwBKbHAhOzh368YYMTIsiIlE3hjRB37/iVmIcQsOhleQ 4Qp8aJSEim8= =Mskz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Shared secrets and corporations in Cyberspace.
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How can collective entities hold keys? Corporations derive their cohesion partly from realspace coercion, and partly by trust based on face to face interactions among the participants, and partly from their brand name. Trusts derive their cohesion primarily from trust, again based on face to face interaction. A cyberspace corporation would derive its cohesion primarily from its name identification and the public key associated with its brand name. Consumers would presumably wish there financial instruments to be signed to the public key of Megacorp life insurance, rather than Megacorp's insurance saleman, for fear that otherwise their funds might go astray, or they might get bad software, etc, and the private key corresponding to that public key will sign the employees paycheques. If a cyberspace corporation does not have a valued brand name it is likely to disintegrate into its components, in the way that some realspace corporations did in the boisterous early days of silicon valley. But this creates a problem of "owning the corporation". If one man knows the corporations secret key, he can pretty much tell the shareholders to go take a hike. If two men know the secret key, it probably will not remain secret much longer. One solution is to use truenames, rather than keys as the "real identity" -- set up financial transaction software so that it considers that any key signed by a proper authority certifying the key to be the key of Megacorp is a valid Megacorp key, that all such keys are equivalent, and that the authority will only issue keys to one entity called Megacorp. Then when folk start fighting over who is the real Megacorp, the authority resolves the dispute by conventional means. Current proposals for transaction software are based on truenames and trees-of-trust. This is not too bad as long as we have a forest, not a single tree, but still, one would like to have some arrangement whereby a large number of people could share a single key, and can buy and sell interests in that key, whereby we can have the mechanisms of shared ownership without the need for an external authority to enforce it. Obviously trusts will work fine in Cyberspace, but trusts are by their nature small and undemocratic. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:01 PM 8/22/95 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: > It's easy > to see how a combination of certification technology and cryptographically > anonymous voting protocols allow the direct election of a company's board > members without proxies -- another hierarchical device -- for instance. It is not so easy for me to see how such protocols allow the shareholders to control the company's keys if the CEO tells the shareholders to go and stick their heads in a bucket. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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