Re: Forgery, bills, and the Four Horsemen (Articles and Comment)
At 23:44 9/4/95, Black Unicorn wrote: [...]
3. The corruption of e-cash to further the above.
If the government is disturbed by the laundering of money enough to actually print, or even propose printing, two kinds of currency, how will they respond to untraceable, unaccountable and infinitely liquid e-cash? I think the answer is in past behavior: e-cash will be linked to the four horsemen and subjected to rigorous reporting requirements- systems which are true e-cash will be banned.
This is unnecessary, since there is no "true" ecash. DigiCash's ecash in its current form, the only version David Chaum is willing to licenese, is fully traceable. Popular Cypherpunk's myths nonwithstanding. First, the recipient of funds is non-anonymous by design. Second, any payer can trivialy make the recipient of a ecash note known by revealing the blinding factor. For purposed of lawenforcement, DigiCash's ecash in no more secure than if the (insert horseman here) billed his fees to a credit card. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.
On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Lucky Green wrote:
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 12:45:44 -0800 From: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> To: Black Unicorn <unicorn@access.digex.net>, cypherpunks@toad.com Subject: Re: Forgery, bills, and the Four Horsemen (Articles and Comment)
At 23:44 9/4/95, Black Unicorn wrote: [...]
3. The corruption of e-cash to further the above.
If the government is disturbed by the laundering of money enough to actually print, or even propose printing, two kinds of currency, how will they respond to untraceable, unaccountable and infinitely liquid e-cash? I think the answer is in past behavior: e-cash will be linked to the four horsemen and subjected to rigorous reporting requirements- systems which are true e-cash will be banned.
This is unnecessary, since there is no "true" ecash. DigiCash's ecash in its current form, the only version David Chaum is willing to licenese, is fully traceable. Popular Cypherpunk's myths nonwithstanding.
Perhaps true, but this assumes that the Chaum method is the only method, which I believe to be incorrect. Perhaps I should use the term "future e-cash models" or "True Digital Cash." Currently there is no "true" e-cash implemented (as far as I know), but this is part of the problem. The product introduced to the public, the original market release will be (is) traceable, why should the public expect anything different? In addition this is exactly what I was talking about in deterring the use of "real" e-cash. Real e-cash will be seen as an anomoly, a perversion of e-cash to make it sneaky for the four horsemen (or that's how I would play it to the public were I a statist).
First, the recipient of funds is non-anonymous by design. Second, any payer can trivialy make the recipient of a ecash note known by revealing the blinding factor. For purposed of lawenforcement, DigiCash's ecash in no more secure than if the (insert horseman here) billed his fees to a credit card.
Again, one more reason that "real" e-cash will be banned. The public doesn't need it as an alternative is widely available. This is the curse (or gift) of crippleware- its use as a diversion. See also, Clipper
-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.
--- 00B9289C28DC0E55 nemo repente fuit turpissimus - potestas scientiae in usu est E16D5378B81E1C96 quaere verum ad infinitum, loquitur sub rosa - wichtig! *New Key Information* - Finger for key revocation and latest key update.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> wrote:
This is unnecessary, since there is no "true" ecash. DigiCash's ecash in its current form, the only version David Chaum is willing to licenese, is fully traceable. Popular Cypherpunk's myths nonwithstanding.
First, the recipient of funds is non-anonymous by design. Second, any payer can trivialy make the recipient of a ecash note known by revealing the blinding factor. For purposed of lawenforcement, DigiCash's ecash in no more secure than if the (insert horseman here) billed his fees to a credit card.
I'm sorry-- what do you mean by "the recipient of funds is non-anonymous"? I cannot envision any centralized currency system in which a user's funds were *not* known to the bank! Secondly, there is a tremendous difference between a person being able to identify you as the recipient of their money (which they can pretty much do anyway, with less surety, just by saying "That's him! He's the one I gave it to!") and a third party such as the bank or a government being able to monitor all your transactions. For such an organization to perform that feat on a DigiCash user they would need the cooperation of all of the people with whom he exchanges currency, and if they have that, then cryptography seems irrelevant. :-) I hope I'm not missing anything here. Regards, Bryce signatures follow: + public key on keyservers /. island Life in a chaos sea or via finger 0x617c6db9 / bryce.wilcox@colorado.edu ---* -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta3 iQCVAwUBMEz5/vWZSllhfG25AQEVsAQAo27grJhSgGV6iO2vIMILiBiib33/Z/73 Fzj5jgGVgqnlJ73UjHrInSas0p7wdKUf+PeLEtSc4xkMnOPvr3gsT34YAOvO6rcR DsKwE7mnxK6hmxZl2UkUJ/dhZql5wbT2im27/RC+N2wgaGbahedpJfdjj+QPP06h uEPTjvT7Yco= =hDCy -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (3)
-
Black Unicorn -
Bryce Wilcox -
shamrock＠netcom.com