December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:10 PM 10/5/96 -0800, Jim Bell wrote: >At 02:14 PM 10/5/96 -0700, Greg Broiles wrote: >>At 04:42 PM 10/4/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >>>I think it's really very simple. Wiretaps in the US were illegal until >>>1968. >> >>Then please explain what the Supreme Court was doing some 40 years prior to >>1968, in _Olmstead v. US_ 277 U.S. 438 (1928), where the product of a >>wiretap was held to be admissible because without a physical trespass there >>was no Fourth amendment violation. (This is no longer good law.) > >Then you ignored the rest of my commentary. While wiretaps were narrowly >held "constitutional" in about 1932, as I vaguely recall, that doesn't mean >that they were LEGAL: On numerous occasions subsequent to 1932, Congress >rejected laws which would have legalized the use of wiretaps. They were not >provided for under law. Obviously, you could take the position that >Congress could have approved of them at any time, as they did in 1968, but >apparently it took such approval to _legalize_ them. Congress doesn't need to explicitly approve the use of new investigatory tools or techniques. Do you think that cops needed special legislation before they could use cars, or telephones, or helicopters, or cameras, or fancier guns, or ..? Also, Congress is not the only legislature to think about - the individual states can (and have) developed their own statutes relating to wiretaps, law enforcement use of wiretaps, and so forth. (See, e.g. Cal. Penal Code s. 630 et seq, Oregon Revised Stats. s. 165.540 et seq) Also, Congress' intent when it passed Title III in 1968 was not to "legalize" wiretapping but to standardize it. I quote from Pub.L. 90-351 (1968): "On the basis of its own investigations and of published studies, the Congress makes the following findings: (a) Wire communications are normally conducted through the use of facilities which form part of an interstate network. The same facilities are used for interstate and intrastate communications. There has been extensive wiretapping carried on without legal sanctions, and without the consent of any of the parties to the conversation . . . The contents of these communications and evidence derived therefrom are being used by public and private parties as evidence in court . . . (b) In order to protect effectively the privacy of wire and oral communications, to protect the integrity of court and administrative proceedings, and to prevent the obstruction of interstate commerce, it is necessary for Congress to define on a uniform basis the circumstances and conditions under which the interception of wire and oral communications may be authorized . . ." It took me less than ten minutes to find that. You could have taken that ten minutes instead. It's abundantly clear that you don't give a shit about the accuracy of what you write. If you're making things up or speculating, you could at least say something like "I think Congress was probably acting to legalize previously illegal wiretaps in 1968", so that it's clear that you're writing on the basis of speculation, not research. It'd also be nice if you'd add some sort of indication that you're posting about your own secret version of the law instead of the one that's used in courtrooms, but I'm going to go ahead and assume that the former is what you mean in the future. >You're ENTIRELY misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) what I'm saying! I'm >well aware that the SC disagrees, but that is simply because they are >entirely wrong in this matter. Why should this surprise you? Given the >rash of 5-4 decisions in the last few years, there can be no illusion that >they always come to the right decision. I don't claim that they agree with >me, quite the opposite. But if anything, their error justifies removing >them by whatever level of force turns out to be necessary. As a matter of Constitutional interpretation, the Supreme Court cannot be "wrong". You and I can disagree with them, but their interpretation is the magic one that trumps ours in court. If we're going to try to organize our lives around a body of writings (e.g., laws) it's not useful for everyone to make up their own meanings for the laws because if we're all following different laws, that's more or less the same as having no law at all. Somebody's interpretation has to be the "right" one; and the United States is organized and has evolved such that the Supreme Court's is the right one. I think it's reasonable for you to say that you don't want to play that game, but I don't see why you need to pretend that your failure to play the game has anything to do with law or legal reasoning. If what you want is anarchy (and as I understand things, you're arguing that people should live by their own interpretation of what's right and wrong, and should kill people who disagree with them, which seems like a fair although unnecessarily dismal view of anarchy), there's no point in arguing about the Constitution. >> Here's a tip: if you think of a >>way to interpret the Constitution that would make law enforcement not >>merely less efficient but effectively impossible, your interpretation will >>not be adopted, > >Your statement is inadvertently illuminating. Legal decisions are not >supposed to be made by people who have a stake in the outcome. Here, you >are acknowledging that there is no way to expect the current legal system >will come to any kind of objective decision concerning these matters, >precisely because they would reject any decision which was seen as >"mak[ing] >law enforcement effectively impossible." This sounds like a classic >conflict-of-interest, huh? It's not quite the same as receiving a bribe, >or falsely convicting an ex-wife's lover of murder, or some sort of purely >personal issue. Nevertheless, it is a conflict of interest. It's not inadvertent - I meant what I said. The Constitution is a document for organizing a government. If you're going to interpret it into such a pretzel-like format that it no longer describes a functional government, it's much more sensible to just say "I don't want to have a government". If you do want to have a government, interpretations which prevent it aren't useful. Your hypothetical "conflict of interest" problem seems beside the point; I don't see how the "can government ever be legitimate?" or "can the government exist?" or "can the government act to enforce the laws?" sort of questions which would create a conflict would ever really be up for debate. There's simply no meaningful argument that the Constitution was intended to do anything but create a government; and it envisions that the executive branch will enforce laws that the legislature chooses to enact. Again, there are certainly other ways to organize human behavior and human societies. But they don't need to have anything to do with the Constitution. In particular, I don't see any reason to try to make anarchy and the Constitution compatible in some perverted logical universe. >And BTW, you vastly overstated your case by suggesting that the rejection of >wiretaps would "make law enforcement...effectively impossible." Before >telephones, there were no wiretaps, right?!? (I won't claim "justice was >done," then, but they would have claimed it was...) And even today, >probably 99%+ of cases decided by courts within the US do not contain any >wiretap evidence at all (I invite you to correct me if I'm wrong, here!) so >I suggest that it is obvious that even the complete rejection of wiretaps >wouldn't "make law enforcement...effectively impossible." (how could it?) Sorry. I skipped a step. I see no meaningful distinction between wiretaps and other searches & seizures. The rule you want to apply to wiretaps should, if it's a good rule, be applied to all searches & seizures. There's nothing special about phone calls. If we're going to give people notice & an opportunity to be heard before even preliminary steps are taken in a criminal proceeding, very few prosecutions will get off the ground. (We can either leave people free pending decisions about searches & arrests, in which case they've got reason & an opportunity to make themselves scarce or destroy evidence; or we can lock them up and seize their houses while arguing about search/arrest warrants, which is also a problem because most of the evidence about guilt or innocence isn't available yet .. so you're holding people & property with very little evidence of wrongdoing. And that's not constitutional or good.) Also, the premises of your argument were known at the time the Fourth Amendment was written & adopted. I think that if the writers & adopters had meant for there to be a pre-search hearing for the target of the search, they'd have said so. You and Detweiler seem to be missing the distinction between what's constitutional and what's useful or possible. I believe that wiretaps are constitutional (assuming the cops jump through all the right hoops). I believe that laws which force me to use wiretappable phones in my home or business are unconstitutional. If many people use unwiretappable phones then wiretaps will become obsolete. But they will still be constitutional in their obsolescence. These two approaches "wiretaps are not allowed" and "wiretaps are allowed but citizens are able to make them ineffective" do reach a similar result (very few or no wiretaps) but the approach used to reach the result is meaningfully different. In particular, the second approach doesn't require a reorganization of search & seizure law. Such a reorganization is unlikely to occur. >>and therefore is not useful. > >No, actually it's potentially quite useful! It's just highly embarrassing >for anyone who has a strong psychological stake in working entirely within >the American legal system. Your arguments are only "highly embarrassing" to someone who identifies with the legal system only in that they have enough buzzwords and are internally consistent (even if based upon fantasy) enough that people with no meaningful contact with the legal system might mistake you for someone familiar with it. >>It might or might not be >>theoretically elegant or logically attractive, it will not be adopted. So >>stop thinking about it. > >Ultimately, I don't think there's even a choice in the matter: The current >system WILL be dropped, possibly directly onto the heads of the people who >currently populate it! Are you going to be part of the solution, or part >of the problem? Depends on your perspective. As this is really no longer even tangentially related to technology or privacy, I won't post further about it (absent a renewed connection to technology or privacy, which I don't anticipate). Jim, you and anyone else who wants it are welcome to the "last word". Please don't interpret my failure to respond as agreement or endorsement of anything beyond an attempt to get the list back closer to being on-topic. -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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Geo-politics and Ant Warfare [rant]
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Sender: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com Reply-To: Ian Grigg <iang(a)systemics.com> Precedence: Bulk Date: Sun, 6 Oct 1996 23:45:29 +0200 From: Ian Grigg <iang(a)systemics.com> To: Multiple recipients of <e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com> Subject: Geo-politics and Ant Warfare [rant] Geo-politics and Ant Warfare It is interesting to see the debate that is going on within the central banking community. Compare these two statements. Hans Tietmeyer urges central bank control: FRANKFURT, Oct 3 (Reuter) - Bundesbank President Hans Tietmeyer said on Thursday a new government policy to give only banks the right to issue pre-paid cards, or ``electronic purses'', should also be applied to Internet network money. whilst Alan Greenspan urges free market development: In conclusion, electronic money is likely to spread only gradually and play a much smaller role in our economy than private currency did historically. Nonetheless, the earlier [free banking] period affords certain insights on the way markets behaved when government rules were much less pervasive. These insights, I submit, should be considered very carefully as we endeavor to understand and engage the new private currency markets of the twenty-first century. The BIS and similar organisations enjoy a secretive reputation second only to the spooks. However, this time, the debate would appear to be being carried out in public as well. I would guess that this results because the digital cash scene is not part of the banking world. Rather, it is an invention of cryptographers, programmers and other technologists, and any debate on the subject must involve them, or drift into fantasy. Many of us have thought long and hard about how the future will look if digital cash takes off under a free banking scenario. The ability of digital cash to be issued from anywhere, by anyone. A world where reputation is everything, and the state has a poor PR team. We've all had fun redesigning the world. But we have all assumed that our designs will be universally accepted. What will happen if one side of the Atlantic adopts a free market approach, whilst the other side decides to regulate? A standoff between Greenspan's Wildcats and the Tietmeyer Blitzkriegers? If such were to develop, it is probable that the battle would develop along existing Internet lines. European banks would breath a collective sigh of relief and get on with the business of converting their existing customer base over to electronic banking, using the Internet as a new form of telephone. They would be safe behind the walls of Fortress Europe, for a while at least, ignoring the small but annoying inroads of the Internet- based competition. In the meantime, the battle for digital money supremacy would be being fought over in the free market North America. And what would emerge is likely to be a powerful, integrated financial system that lives in the Internet and is cohesive with it. In the short term, a great shift in composition would occur as many non-banks enter the banking business. In the medium term, after the victor(s) emerge, the fight for growth would push the battle over to uncommitted peoples such as Asia and the other Americas. And in the long term, it's time to take on that last bastion of regulated banking. Earlier today, I was guessing that Mr Tietmeyer was buying his banks about 3 years of peace (and nice profits), and there wouldn't be too much of an opposition to that notion. But after ploughing my way through today's e$pam of announcements, I now downgrade the "long term" to 6 months of Indian summer. That is, before the ink dries on his new law of banking social security, it will be about as much use as a printout of an IP packet. In contrast, Mr Greenspan is signalling the start of an era of bloodletting. He may stain a few reputations and friendships in the process, and ruin his chance of a cushy retirement number at anywhere but CitiBank, but he's also offering the prize of the rest of the world at the end of the battle. Once the Internet Financial System settles down into a nice, stable, statistical industry (run by Americans, of course), then it's time to absorb the rest. That is, if he is allowed to get his way. Regardless of Mr Tietmeyer's preferences for "peace in our time", there is much activity in the digital cash munitions factories. Programmers and cryptographers are an undisciplined lot, as well as being more international than the TLAs give them credit for. It is unlikely that they will just hand over their invention, even if asked nicely. So what happens next? Well, banking on the Continent is being wooed with promises of protection, whilst the soldier ants of the Internet war machine are gathering on the border. Indigenous ant production may save them, and there again, it may not. To live in interesting times, indeed. -- iang 06 oct 96 iang(a)systemics.com -- References http://www.bog.frb.fed.us/BOARDDOCS/SPEECHES/S960919.htm is Alan Greenspan hinting that maybe they shouldn't have set up a central bank in the first place. http://www.ffhsj.com/bancmail/tpvtest.htm for an excellent display on the diplomacy of regulation. The rest of the above Reuters release: Tietmeyer said in the text of a speech to The Economic Club of New York that G-10 central bank governors were addressing the new payment forms because they may cause difficulties for central banks to ensure the integrity of payments. Tietmeyer noted European Union central bankers have agreed that only banks should issue the pre-paid cards. The policy is expected to be widened to include the rights to create and maintain Internet-based electronic cash systems. ``In our opinion, the same should definitely also apply to network money,'' he said. Tietmeyer said electronic forms of money tend to crowd out currency and deposit money, which may increase the potential for credit institutions to create money. ``Electronic money may impair the supervisory functions of the central bank, or, in other words, its function of ensuring the integrity of payments,'' Tietmeyer said in a text of the speech released in Frankfurt under embargo. ``That would increase the risk of crises in one country spreading out to engulf payment systems worldwide,'' he said. Electronic purses are plastic cards with a built-in micro-chip which stores the electronic cash value of an account and can be reloaded at special machines. The proposal to restrict such projects to banks is part of a new German banking law which is still under preparation but expected to be enforced in 1997. Tietmeyer said it was difficult to create definitive regulations for electronic money at ``this early stage''. ``The evolution of electronic money is only in its infancy. But it is a characteristic feature of today's world that tomorrow's world will be upon us in no time,'' he said. Electronic purses, also known as smart cards, are not yet available in cash-dominated Germany but tests are being run on several projects. Internet banking is slowly gaining credence in Germany after some of the top banks, including Dresdner Bank AG, launched securities trading accounts via the Internet. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "'Bart Bucks' are not legal tender." -- Punishment, 100 times on a chalkboard, for Bart Simpson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: PGP
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's a rumor that Timmy C. May sells his dead relatives as fertiliser as they constitute the best shit in California.

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[CRYPTO] Secure envelopes
by dustman＠athensnet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Many forgeries are traceable with mathematical certainty to feebleminded Timothy May poison keyboard.

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Re: Voice Stress Analysis of Debates?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:11 PM 10/6/96 -0700, Steve Schear wrote: >BTW, did anyone notice that some of the evening news anchors are imaged via >a camera/DSP to render as more youthful (e.g., removing facial wrinkles)? Really? Where'd you hear this? I suppose it's not beyond the realm of possibility, but that would be rather sophisticated programming, particularly in real-time. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:43 PM 10/5/96 -0700, Detweiler wrote: >>"Right to choose to be in contempt of court" ? If only I could attach a >>sound file with my howling laughter to this post. > >I find it as ludicrous as you do, but it's the clear insinuation >suggested by hard-core cypherpunks / anarchists in this forum. I wrote something which you might be confusing for this argument; in case this is what you mean, I've reproduced it below: [originally sent on 9/18/96] >There's a world of difference between the government subpoena-ing something >from me, where I can delay disclosure until I've exhausted my legal avenues >to challenge disclosure, and the government demanding data from an at best >disinterested third party who cares not at all if I get my day in court >before they disclose. With the second scenario, I'm forced to try to >"unring the bell", and somehow limit the spread of otherwise >private/confidential data in a community (law enforcement) which is >organized to collect and retain information. Ha, ha. Given today's Congress >and Supreme Court, there's probably precious little chance that keys >disclosed prematurely or erroneously won't be used to collect evidence >which will be admissible despite the lack of meaningful opportunity to >challenge the "recovery" of a key. Also, there is an important difference between making a policy argument or expressing a preference, e.g.: "I like having a choice between disclosing information which is requested and suffering the penalties for contempt of court" and an argument about the constitution: "The constitution says I must be given a choice between disclosing and contempt." I don't remember seeing any examples of the latter come across the list. As I remember things, the context of my statement above was a discussion of why third-party key escrow is not the same as self-escrow. >>Do not make the mistake of thinking there is no case law on wiretap simply >>because you have not/are too lazy to go to the library and look it up. > >I said, "at least it is rarely quoted here", lawyer-boy. It's rarely quoted here because it is unremarkable; just as the list is not a place for basic crypto education, it is not a place for basic legal education. It's difficult to come up with a good summary of legal issues or subjects which is readable by lay people and short and accurate (esp. given that it will be interpreted by lay people in potentially 51 domestic jurisdictions, plus foreign folks). Good, fast, cheap, pick any two. As Brian Davis and Uni have pointed out, people who keep current enough on legal topics to be able to give you a good answer will probably want to get paid for doing so. Saying "here's a legal argument that I made up in the shower. what do you guys think of it?" and expecting a detailed explanation of why it's good or bad is the same as saying "here's my new crypto algorithm that I thought of in the shower, what do you guys think of it?". >>You propose to refight a case soundly resolved ages ago and you propose to >>get the rest of the list to do your homework for you. > >nevertheless, you might not come off as so utterly condescending >and self-pretentious if you gave even the slightest smidgeon >of a reference yourself, instead of preferring to insult a poster. Merely asking the question "Is there case law on wiretaps?" suggests that an answer which includes references will be wasted on you. It will probably be wasted because your level of interest doesn't seem to have spurred you to darken the doorstep of a library or bookstore yet; so an answer which requires you to do so seems unhelpful. It will also probably be wasted because if you don't already know that there's caselaw about it you probably don't have enough legal background to place whatever new information you might get from those references in a useful conceptual framework. But perhaps my speculation is wrong and you are prepared to follow up meaningfully on references, so .. Go to a law library or larger general library and ask the librarian to show you where the annotated copy of 18 USC 2510 is. Read the statute. Read the legislative history. Read the annotations. Read the cases which were annotated. Repeat this process until you reach 18 USC 2709 or die of boredom. Ask the librarian to help you find LaFave's treatises on search & seizure. Read them. (The answer to most of the "how do I find out about 'X'?" questions is to make friends with a librarian who doesn't mind helping you out, just like with research questions in other fields you may not be familiar with. But surely it's not possible to get much beyond the age of 12 or so and not know that ..?) Try "Understanding Criminal Procedure" by Dressler (Matthew Bender, 1991), and "Criminal Law" by LaFave & Scott (West). (For extra credit, ask for the USCA/USCS annotated copy of the Fourth Amendment, and read those annotations and cases.) If there's a law school near you, you might go to the school's bookstore and look for books in the "Nutshell" series, or the "Emanuel's" series, or the hardbound hornbooks. These books are mostly used by law students to get an overview of a particular area of the law. They are not especially detailed nor up-to-the-minute current but usually aren't totally wrong. They also don't usually touch on a particular state's law, but discuss either federal law or an amalgam of state law, so they aren't good for solving a particular concrete problem. But they will help you figure out that, e.g., wiretaps have been legal for at least 60-70 years. Now that you've got some references to work with, please write back and tell us what you learned. (Dorothy Denning & others have written a summary of wiretap procedure which I don't have time/energy to check for correctness - but it's at <http://www.cpsr.org/cpsr/privacy/communications/wiretap/denning_wiretap_pro cedure_paper.txt>. EFF and CPSR both seem to have some wiretap/privacy materials available.) -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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No Subject
by mthompso＠qualcomm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Conon sequiter. Crack cocaine doesn't put holes in people either. -m Michelle Thompson, World Tour 1996!

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Re: WINDOWS NT ????
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I agree totally, Security on computers in my opinion is like Locks on > doors, It only keeps honest people out Or uneducated/untrained/unintelligent/uncurious ones. Petro, Christopher C. petro(a)suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow(a)smoke.suba.com

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Put up or shut up! was Re: legality of wiretapping: a "key" distinction
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think those of you who continue to answer the unresearched rants of amateur lawyers waste your efforts on trying to change the learning habits of other, hopefully, mature adults. If it ain't good by now, forget it. Using, as you say, out-of-the-shower ideas to re-argue settled caselaw are almost always fruitless. Since the intents of the ranters are generally anarchistic, why even involve the law and justice. Even if their ideas have good philosophical basis there is little hope for the broad changes they seek in the political or legal landscape (given the powerful and selfish interests of those inside and outside the beltway) without a great trauma to the system. Look at the relatively pitifully accomplishments Jefferson was able to show for his many years of Republican efforts, and that after serving two terms as president. I believe that this is also the case for individuals. Almost all of us have great difficulty adopting new behaviors (e.g., dietary, excercise, change in unhealthy/illegal sexual behavior), even ones thought beneficial, unless there is great incentive or an experience which is so fundemental (e.g., near death) that we are forced confront it head on. My advice to these amateur anarchists is, if they really believe in their quest, become professionals and develop and use whatever means (civial disobedience, crypto, CBW, AP, etc.) they think they require to shock the system into confronting your demands and see how it plays out. Otherwise shut up! PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Sacred Cow Meat Co. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Just say NO to prescription DRUGS. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -- C.S. Lewis "Surveillence is ultimately just another form of media, and thus, potential entertainment." -- G. Beato

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Re: "Drift net fishing," GAK, FBI, and NSA
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>At 2:05 PM -0700 10/6/96, Steve Schear wrote: >(quoting me) > >>Are SSN and other ID required when opening a 'pre-paid' credit card >>account? That is, the ones for persons with poor credit who are required >>to maintain a balance sufficient to pay off the charges? Perhaps we could >>put our heads together and determine a way to become franchised by MC/VISA >>and offer 'affinity' type accounts with no address requirements (all >>statments are sent via remailer/nym email). > >A couple of people on this list talked about a similar thing, a "Privacy >Card," with the explicit policy of not reporting transactions in detail to >the Big Three (the government-friendly TRW Credit, Equifax, and Transunion). > >The idea being that if a "market for privacy" exists, someone ought to be >able to make a nice piece of change offering a card that protects privacy. > >One problem is that many people _want_ credit card transactions reported to >the Big Three, to build up their credit record. > >(But many don't care. I've been using a VISA card issued by my stock broker >for 12 years now. It's a "debit card," though it's handled by a merchant >exactly as a credit card, and they probably can't see any difference. What >I gathered when buying my current house, is that none of these transactions >were part of my "credit history," as I was actually using a debit card. All >of those now using, or planning to use, a debit card would be ideal >candidates for a "Privacy Card.") No doubt. > >Such a deal would have to be one of Visa, MasterCard, or Discover, with >American Express a distant fourth. (I don't even know if these >companies/tradenames would even allow such a thing, of course.) The cost of >rolling out a brand new type of card would of course be prohibitively high. > The banks offering these pre-paid 'credit', really debit, cards are already offering such an instrument. Although I've got my hands full at the moment, I've been asked by several money sources to investigate some unconventional, but legal, instrument services. Seems, as you say, you only have to guarantee the holder that they and establish and transact business with relatively good anonymity. >(I have no expectation than this will be done, and I think I said so at the >time. Ever the realist, in some ways, I knew no one would take on such a >complex project. Just as no one followed through with the "Cypherpunks >Credit Union" idea, discussed at several meetings in 1993.) > I'm not making any promises, but I have some banking experience (6 years at Citicorp) developing financial products, ATM, wireless and transaction crypto. The most difficult part, besides the marketing, would be getting a MC/VISA franchise under acceptable contractual terms. I've never done this sort of thing. Seems you wouldn't need to pitch this to MC/VISA any different than many of the other similar 'debit' cards. Unless their contracts specifically contain a 'know you payee' provision (required for checking and savings, which are Fed insured, and money transmitters), it shouldn't be a problem. -- Steve

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