-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The entity calling itself "Perry Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> is alleged to have written:
bryce@digicash.com writes:
Unfortunately I can't think of a good way to have both pseudonymity and nym-differentiation. I think that it is possible, however. Can anyone suggest a mechanism?
Terminals which genetically sample their users?
I hate hardware solutions. I'm a software guy. <img alt=":-)" src="http://www-ugrad.cs.colorado.edu/~wilcoxb/smiley.1.gif">
Seriously, the problem, as stated, is thoroughly impossible to solve in the real world. Anyone can pretend to be anyone in the non-cyberspace world -- how can you stop them on the net?
Okay having said I couldn't think of a good way, I'll go ahead and suggest a way. Let's assume that it is possible to stop people from pretending to be anyone in Real Life(tm). (It is possible.) Now let's collect N people and form a Dining-Cryptographers' net. Once the Dining-Cryptographers' net is up-and-running let's put out a call for each of the N participants to announce a public key which will be their nym from now on. Assuming that you get N public keys, you can have _some_ degree of assurance that there is a one-to-one mapping between pubkeys/nyms and humans on the DC-Net. Voila. It's weak and complicated, so I wouldn't call it a "good way", but it _is_ a way to have both pseudonymity and nym-differentiation. Now that I've done this part, would someone else handle the perpetual motion, FTL travel, cold fusion and so forth? Thanks. Regards, Bryce -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMZTpGUjbHy8sKZitAQHK5QMAyYqR6Nv8j2HOMdq2JbTj1ZOiYhN2nbP9 WIwI92NyKVuv+i/PwGk8kkCsaGpq2n89/9JV2uKxvCN12m5on+rWwbDZeWUaHtgg t7UXyGCV7bF8gauFvT1z2JMLmBzumZ4Q =fnkf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----