Jim Bell <jimbell@pacifier.com> writes:
At 02:06 PM 9/26/96 -0500, snow wrote:
Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> wrote:
[...] More specifically perhaps they would disconnect key backbones, and ISPs briefly while they rushed into effect a few presidential decrees outlawing non GAKed crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, DC-nets, etc.)
This would be cutting their own throats. There is SO much commercial and government traffic going across "The Net" that many businesses would scream bloody murder, and the government would have MASSIVE trouble with it's agenda.
Yes, that "they'll cut off the Internet!" talk doesn't seem to be very practical. Society very quickly develops dependency on inventions. Try to take away their computers and they'd scream; take away their telephone and it'd be worse! Give Internet another couple of years and 50% of big business would be severely impacted should it be cut off. Wait five years and the world would practically stop rotating without Internet.
Maybe so. However I suggested that they would more likley outlaw non GAK crypto, anonymous ecash, remailers, PGP, etc. Perhaps I should read your later AP essay in case you have already countered my practicality objections. (Do you have AP on the www somewhere?), We've seen people suggest that you couldn't get away with AP, by claiming that the gambling was legal. (They'd get you for interstate gambling, conspiracy probably other things). So, it seems to me that your only approach is to do the whole thing anonymously. That requires anonymous ecash (payee and payor anonymous). This means that the anonymous ecash bank will be shutdown by the government as soon as it becomes apparent what is going on. Remailer operators are similar soft targets. The best you could do I think is this. Publish a PGP public key, and software or specifications for a robust steganographic encoding for AP bets. That would take care of comunication. You still have the ecash problem. What do you suggest? Adam