- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Why we still don't use digital cash
by lcs Mixmaster Remailer 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

George writes: > Chaum's proposals always seemed a little > weird to me, I'd be amazed if there wasn't a perfectly > good way to implement dc without stepping on his patents. Probably so, see the references in the recent critique of the Wired article. > If you look at the process of obtaining digital cash abstractly, > I give you a bag of money, you give me a bag of tokens I can > use to spend in shops, it seems to me that there are in principle > two general sorts of ways that I can maintain my anonymity. > ... > 2) Just make it so you don't see my face when I get the bag of > tokens. > > This seems a lot more straightforward and natural to me. Well, the problem is that to exchange cash for tokens, you need a way of sending cash to the bank. But if this exchange is to be done electronically, then that means you are sending e-cash. But your "tokens" *are* e-cash! So your description shows how to get anonymous e-cash, but only if you already start with anonymous e-cash. What you can do is to do an initial withdrawal of e-cash, non-anonymously, then do anonymous exchanges for fresh e-cash tokens. This is essentially the approach of Dan Simon of Microsoft, which is unfortunately patented, US05768385. It is described at http://www.research.microsoft.com/crypto/papers/ecash2.ps. Here is some analysis from June, 1998 cypherpunks post: : The basic idea is that to withdraw money, you select a random x and : send f(x) to the bank, where f() is a one way function. The bank debits : your account and sends you sign(f(x)), a signature on f(x). To deposit : the money you need to supply both x and sign(f(x)). By requiring you : to exhibit x, sign(f(x)) is no longer sensitive, so you don't have to : encrypt your communications with the bank. : : To pay someone else, you send them x and sign(f(x)). (This transaction : does have to be encrypted, because it includes x.) Now, if he just : deposits this to his bank account, the transaction would not be anonymous : since the bank would recognize sign(f(x)) as being associated with a : specific withdrawal. : : Instead, the recipient can do the standard anonymous-exchange trick, : long discussed in the context of Chaumian cash. He anonymously sends x, : sign(f(x)) to the bank along with a new "withdrawal request" created by : randomly choosing y and sending f(y) to the bank. The bank exchanges : the coin, sending sign(f(y)) back anonymously. Now this second party : can spend his coin y, sign(f(y)) with someone else, who does a similar : exchange. (The obscure "claim 27" quoted in the patent excerpt described : this process in the case where change is being made, and multiple coins : are received in exchange for one deposited.) : : Simon's protocol has several problems. First, the whole business : about sending around the secret values x and y is largely pointless. : Since you need secure communications for some steps, you might as well : assume you have them for all of them. In that case you could just send x : to the bank and get it signed (forcing x to be of some restricted form), : and then let sign(x) represent the coin. Everything works the same way. : : Second, it is not really anonymous. Note that no blinding is used. : Although the bank does not know who turned coin x into coin y, it does : know which coin was exchanged for which. Suppose it goes through, say, : three steps before being deposited. Coin x is withdrawn, anonymously : exchanged for y, which is anonymously exchanged for z, which is : later deposited. The bank knows who withdrew x and who deposited z. : It doesn't know who the intermediate parties were, which is the extent : of the anonymity. If the coins are circulating among a tightly knit : group this could completely compromise anonymity as the bank gathers : data on payment patterns. : : Furthermore, it is not clear how long these transfer chains will be : in practice. It may be in many cases that a coin is withdrawn and : then immediately deposited. That's how cash businesses work these : days. For that case, Simon suggested (at Crypto) that the recipient : could perform some "dummy exchanges", so it would look to the bank : like it had gone through some third parties. But if the bank suspects : this is going on, it is ineffective. The bank sees a withdrawal by : Alice and a deposit by Bob, after some intermediate transfers, and : it may speculate that Alice paid Bob directly. Again, sufficient : statistical data can be built up over time to correlate transfers and : reveal these patterns. : : This whole effort is an attempt to get anonymous payments without : violating Chaum's patents. But the anonymity is extremely weak, and : the use of one way functions makes the protocol look more sophisticated : than it is. Ultimately, this is just a matter of banks issuing signed : tokens to represent coins, with people being able to exchange them for : new ones anonymously. As such, the idea has been discussed since the : early days of cypherpunks and would not be patentable. Simon had to dress : it up with the one way functions to get something that looks different, : but ultimately it is nothing new or interesting.

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The Register - ICANN Whois survey is biased - Froomkin responds
by Jim Choate 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/19727.html -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ "...where annual election ends, tyranny begins;" Thomas Jefferson & Samuel Adams The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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15 Jun '01

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15 Jun '01

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Thought-A-Day
by Fountain Of Joy 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

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Thought-A-Day
by Fountain Of Joy 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

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Ex-GOP senator's wife pleads to email attack campaign
by Declan McCullagh 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> -----

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Stuffing
by Nena 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

Are you Andrew Devore? ty nena

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Scot free: Lon Horiuchi
by George＠Orwellian.Org 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

Hold on while I unslime myself from that barrage of Choatian Crap. ---- Boundary Blockhead Brett Benson, a 73% vote winning Republican elected along with the Bush-ster. http://foxnews.com/story/0,2933,27300,00.html [snipped] # # Boundary County Prosecutor Brett Benson announced Thursday he # will dismiss the involuntary manslaughter charge filed by his # [Republican] predecessor. He said it was unlikely the state # could prove the case and too much time had passed. I guess it's okay to shoot at the back of someone going through a door of a wooden shack containing women and children. To kill. Timothy McVeigh, among others (i.e. Congressional hearings), did indeed force the U.S. government to reconsider its confrontational ways. Let us remember this BATF/FBI operation once more. The U.S. Department of Justice... ---- Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge. Persisting, a BATF informant persuaded Weaver, a DECORATED GREEN BERET VETERAN of Vietnam with NO CRIMINAL RECORD, to sell him two shotguns, but insisted that Weaver saw the barrels off one-quarter inch short of the legal limit. Monitoring him, they knew Mr. Weaver needed money for his family. Why did the government target Mr. Weaver? Blackmail. One of the FBI's favorite activities is spying on political organizations. They wanted to use him to infiltrate white supremacists groups for the government. Or face prosecution. When Weaver refused, he was indicted on guns charges. He was sent two conflicting court appearance dates. He became paranoid the Government was out to get him, so he didn't show up. [He was eventually acquitted of all charges except the original not showing up in court!] To justify a militaristic retaliation, BATF agents lied to the U.S. attorney's office. BATF agents claimed that Weaver had a criminal record and that he was a suspect in several bank robberies. Both charges were fabrications, even according to BATF Director John Magaw, who admitted the accusations were "inexcusable" in testimony before Congress. THREE HUNDRED armed federal agents conducted a siege of the Weavers' mountain home, first killing Randy Weaver's dog, then his son, then his wife. A law enforcement wilding. * The CATO Institute, "Congressional Testimony", May 24, 1995 * http://www.cato.org * * The Marshals, wearing camouflage and carrying silenced machine guns, did * not identify themselves or their purpose, but they did shoot one of the * dogs. Sammy Weaver, fourteen-years-old, returned fire, and was promptly * shot by a Marshal. * * Sammy turned and fled, with his nearly severed arm flopping as he ran. * * Sammy was promptly shot dead in the back. An FBI sniper, Lon T. Horiuchi, testified he could hit a quarter at 200 yards. * The CATO Institute, "Congressional Testimony", May 24, 1995 * * An FBI psychological profile, prepared before the attack, called Vicki * Weaver the "dominant member" of the family, thus implying that if she * were "neutralized" everyone else might surrender. Horiuchi shot Weaver's wife in the head while she held her baby. Her head exploded. Her dead body was laid out on the cabin floor, covered with a blanket: * The CATO Institute, "Congressional Testimony", May 24, 1995 * * During the next week, "the FBI used megaphones to taunt the family. * 'Good Morning Mrs. Weaver. We had pancakes for breakfast. What did * you have?'" asked the FBI agents in at least one exchange. * * Weaver's daughter, Sarah, 16, said the baby, Elisheba, was often * crying for her mother's milk when the FBI messages were heard. The Justice Department's own report recommended criminal prosecution of federal agents; the surviving Weavers won $3.1 million in civil damages from U.S. taxpayers. Deval Patrick, the Assistant Attorney General for civil rights, and Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, took no serious action. Larry Potts was the senior official in charge of the operation. Not only was he not prosecuted, Freeh promoted him to acting deputy FBI director. * "Documents Were Destroyed as FBI Resisted Siege Investigation, Report Says" * By David Johnston, July 16, 1995 * * Mr. Pott's former subordinate Michael Kahoe admitted he destroyed key * documents on the Ruby Ridge assault. The Justice department reports * documents were destroyed and missing. "We are troubled by the apparent * lack of a system to preserve such critical records." * * The Justice Department, in a March 18, 1993 memo stated, "the FBI's * intransigence appears to EMANATE from Larry Potts level OR ABOVE." Larry Potts was a buddy of Louis Freeh. Within the FBI, these special people are called "FOL" - Friends of Louie. [NYT 5/11/97] Janet Reno (who had veto power over the promotion) testified what happened at Ruby Ridge wasn't enough to cause her to veto the promotion, foreshadowing her actions at Waco. After two months, controversy (as opposed to events) over Potts' role in Ruby Ridge prompted Freeh to remove him from the position, to politically cover his own tush. Potts and four other top FBI officials have been suspended while a federal criminal probe investigates the destruction of documents related to the incident. A total of twelve agents were disciplined. None have yet been prosecuted. The Federal government subsequently named after a U.S. Marshal who was killed, but who also shot Randy Weaver's son dead in the back: a new Marshals training center. The Federal government's behavior in the incident can only be described as sickening: targeting a citizen (a veteran, no less) who committed no crime AND EVEN HAD NO CRIMINAL RECORD (but had politically incorrect views) for blackmail, then acting vengefully when he wouldn't act as their rat fink. Shoot-to-kill. Sniper team. Military fatigues. A terrorizing organization: how else to explain the cruel cruel taunting. A terrorist organization by virtue of shoot-to-kill orders.

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do the fed legally
by bpayne37＠home.com 15 Jun '01

15 Jun '01

http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/8327/ if, of course, the legal method doesn't work we may have some other ideas

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