DO NOT FORWARD THIS MESSAGE TO ANY OTHER LISTS. I AM GETTING TIRED OF SEEING CYPHERPUNKS JUST BE THE DUMPING GROUND FOR STUFF FROM OTHER LISTS. In almost all foreseeable cases, a system which allows identity escrow _cost more_ than a system which does not. This is analogous to the increased costs of a identity-based money system over an immediate-clearing, non-identity-based system. As an example, consider the network of CP or Mixmaster sorts of remailers. To package a payload through N remailers is a relatively easy thing for a a sender to do. But to arrange for propagation of "escrowed identity" at each (or most) of these N remailer nodes is costly. Any of these N remailers, in K different countries/jurisdictions, may use the "legal warrant" access method to open the identity escrow. For example, Finland in the Scientology/NOTS case...Finland surely would have used their "legal warrant" method had such an option existed. This is part of a larger issue, a philosophical one, about who controls "legal warrants." The Jew can be killed by using legal warrants, in Third Reich Germany. The libertarian in Soviet Russia. The pornographer in Canada. And nearly anyone who deviates from the official line in these beknighted states of america: smut peddlers, drug legalization advocates, supporters of Russia vs. Chechnya prior to 9/11, supporters of Chechnya vs. Russia after 9/11, liberators of Diebold documents showing the weakness of their voting machines, and so on and on. See my 1995-6 list of our enemies (Catholics, Whigs, Mormons, Communists...) for a very long list of those for whom "identity escrow" would have meant death or imprisonment in these beknighted states. Back to the cost issue. Prof. Lessig argues that voluntary identity escrow systems should be "encouraged." How/ Through nattering to people about how they ought to use a more expensive, less flexible system which exposes them to possible danger and which costs them more to use than the stronger alternative? Ha! Or "encouraged" in the sense of using state power to make stronger systems illegal or artificially taxed at higher rates? Why doesn't the U.S.G. just set up a "Big Brother Remailer" with the kind of identity escrow proposed? Let's then see how many freedom fighters working for the overthrow of the U.S. government use it. Let's see how many critics of the Church of Scientology, threatened with lawsuits and "legal warrants," use it. Let's see how much child porn gets traded on it. --Tim May