-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <199605051818.LAA13740@dns2.noc.best.net>, <jamesd@echeque.com> wrote:
It is true that the issuer is unable to discover that double blinding is being used. The real problem with the protocol is that it requires payor/payee collusion, which may make it difficult to execute.
At 07:58 PM 5/4/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
=09Can the payee discover that the payor isn't colluding before the bank can figure out who the payee is?
If the payor is not colluding, then the payee will immediately discover he has not been paid, because the checksums are wrong, and his software says "bad payment"
If the payor is colluding, then no matter what he reveals to the bank, the bank cannot discover the payee. Note that with payee anonymity, the payee does not have to promptly check in his money, so the bank has no hope of narrowing the search by coincidence in time.
But if the payee is colluding, then the payor can be detected by=20 coincidence in time.
Ah, but if we have the capability to do the fully-anon protocol, we can suddenly do change-making stations. The change problem is similar to the problem described above: what if the payor wants to buy something, but doesn't have the right change? Going to the bank to get change will give away who he is. The solution: go to your local moneychanger. A moneychanger accepts, say, a coin for $0.02 and two blinded half-coins for $0.01 each. He deposits the $0.02, and if it clears, has the bank sign the half-coins, which he returns to the payor (he'll probably blind and unblind those half-coins, too). The payor now has the right change, and all the bank can see is that the moneychanger deposited a $0.02 coin and withdrew 2 $0.01 coins. Of course, the moneychanger may charge the payor an extra bit for the privilege. In the case of the fully-anon protocol, the payee gives a blinded half-coin to the payor. The payor then, as above, sends it (and a service fee) to the moneychanger, who sends it to the bank (or maybe another moneychanger... echos of remailers...), yadda yadda. A moneychanger is a very useful construct for protecting _payor_ privacy when exact change isn't handy. Note also that with a system like this, there's no real reason for the payor to even _have_ an account with the bank... If (when) the ecash library is released, this will all become pretty straightforward to implement. - Ian "who thinks he understands the ecash protocol, right down to the wire" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMY/wwkZRiTErSPb1AQEFuAP/WSOBZ1GrK7SVn3s823fgIlQw5TLgvGgX MJtpsYiF5bREL/8Rcz96YZxw7ZeWYiTbTB+LFb4gqvCQg4/1xnybINYvmowxgPVr w0WrJ1ZkwgYoEzGFBlXhS4+jH3RGHk2tiB9TB9irjrsv7lK2sBR7ZL1k3sF93LSs 8kLCK/iiF5M= =PV1S -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----