LD asks about the status of digicash credit unions and such.
1. Do you have to join the CA cypherpunks to learn about this? Obviously you guys have been working on this a long time, and as long as I was on the list I barely saw any peep about it.
Several different projects are going on. The credit-union approach is from some folks in the Austin cypherpunks group whose names I've forgotten, who posted a rather funny article to the net a few months back about their drive to Dallas to meet Chaum; I think it was on both sci.crypt and cypherpunks. The other project I know about is the one Eric Hughes and friends are working on. Anything having to do with banking law tends to take an immense learning-curve hit just to do the legalities - they're often harder than the technical work, given the availability of Chaum and other people's work in the academic community. As with most projects, people spend a while kicking around what they'd like a system to do, and developing technology to do it (often in parallel, and sometimes science-fiction writers tell us what a system *ought* to be doing for us long before anybody figures out the details of how to do it or what the real implications of technology are), but sitting down and actually implementing something is often a lot of work - especially if you're doing stuff like writing business plans and hunting down venture capitalists, which may not go on as publicly. Unfortunately, certain flame-wars have made it difficult for people to do real work on cypherpunks (ahem!), and have forced people to adjust the priorities of what they read and think about and how much time they spend doing or talking about new fun stuff. (Flames to /dev/null :-)) This means that sometimes the only way to find out what people are doing is to meet them in person, or send private email saying "what are you up to these days?" One of the valuable parts of CA-cypherpunks has been everybody going around the room saying "here's what I've been playing with lately."
2. Is this a private development group? Is it open to anyone who wishes to join? If so, are cy{b,ph}erwonks allowed to join in the development? We are interested in these kinds of projects.
Don't know; you can ask the people doing the work by email, and maybe they'll think it's worth their time to bring you up to date and ask for your help if you've got usefl contributions. Or you can go out and start one yourself, and ask for help; lots of the important projects get the bulk of their work done by 1 or a few people working hard.
3. [other mailing lists?] Nobody's invited me :-), except there's the IMP lists, which I haven't taken the time for yet.
4. If any of your projects are indeed secret, why are many cypherpunks actively engaged in a campaign on the imp-interest list (Internet Mercantile Protocols)? Why don't you just stick to your own project and let the Internet sort out which protocol is more acceptable to the world-at-large?
There are dozens of different flavors of applications for moving money, goods, and services around the Internet, with different needs, different economic characteristics, etc. Most of them need some form of crypto to be usable, whether to prevent forgery or counterfeiting, preserve privacy, guarantee you'll get paid, deliver the goods and cash at the same time, etc. That means that cypherpunks, sci.crypt readers, and people like us who may or may not have time to follow the lists :-) are generally the experts on this sort of technology among internet-users, except for corporate efforts which may be going on in proprietary-space. An IMP needs to accommodate a wide range of needs, and needs to avoid re-making mistakes that cypherpunks have already learned to avoid. While I certainly am concerned about keeping information about where I'm travelled and when private, both I and the subway providers are willing to risk using little mag-cards bought for cash with the $5-20 they hold; on the other hand, I'd really rather not file my income tax return on postcards or satellite broadcast-grams with payment attached via my credit-card numbers, SSN, mother's maiden name, and digitized-ink signature. You may have other preferences :-)
5. What about the rumors that seem to be confirmed by what B.Stewart said about evading tax laws and black marketeering, that the cypherpunk credit union is actually a surreptitious front for plans to provide money laundering over the Internet?
That's a political question for another thread, and most of what I said was political discussion, it wasn't market surveys of customers. FOllowups to cypherwonks, please. Any sufficiently advanced technology...
7. What is the David Chaum connection to all this? I know that he met with E.Hughes to discuss plans but are the Cypherpunks to be understood as the U.S.-based Chaum group?
Chaum and the folks at C.W.I. and Chaum's company have developed a lot of the interesting technology, or at least patented it in the U.S., so you *have* to deal with them if you want to go into business. That doesn't mean you become a subsidiary, just a customer. Meanwhile, the meeting you're referring to was between Chaum and the Austin folks, as I and others have mentioned. Bill Stewart # Bill Stewart NCR Corp, 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 # Voice/Beeper 510-224-7043, Phone 510-484-6204 # email bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart@attmail.com