Jonathan Corbet wrote:
The following, from RISKS, deserves redistribution.... Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 13:04:47 -0400 From: pcw@access.digex.net (Peter Wayner) Subject: Bringing Home the Anonymous Bacon The *Baltimore Sun* reports in its 17 Sep 1996 issue that people in Baltimore are paying for drugs with meat (page A1! [pretty saucy!]). Perhaps this is not yet anonymous digital cash, but certainly anonymous. [Now someone is going to propose keeping a database of all sides of beef, and steganographically watermarking the meat in the context of digitally signed scannable grade-stamps. Perhaps the next step in monitoring the private drug-meat trade would be to escrow the inspectors' private keys, derived from the product of two U.S. Primes, and put the database up on the net: the T-bone connected to the M-bone, etc.? PGN]
Did you ever see one of those mattress tags which reads something like "removal of this tag is a violation of ..... and is punishable by ..."? They could tag the stuff, then make it a violation of law to cut the meat before final consumption. The IRS is very concerned about barter, and besides, how are you gonna go half way on legislating against untraceable barter (other than to prohibit dividing the beef)?