--- begin forwarded text Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 15:55:00 -0400 To: tboyle@rosehill.net Cc: dbs@philodox.com Subject: Re: DBS, Privacy, Money Laundering nonsense. Mime-Version: 1.0 From: Ryan Lackey <ryan@venona.com> Sender: <dbs@philodox.com> Precedence: Bulk List-Subscribe: <mailto:requests@philodox.com?subject=subscribe%20dbs> X-Web-Archive: http://www.philodox.com/dbs-archive/ Also Sprach Todd Boyle (tboyle@rosehill.net):

* If thieves could hide the money they stole, there would be substantial increase in frequency and severity of theft;

I think this is definitely true. Particularly if it is *easy* to hide the money stolen, as criminals may be expert in a particular field of crime that is *not* financial -- it's already easy for a white-collar criminal to hide money, using the same skills used in white-collar crimes of other sorts, but not so easy for an armed robber.

* Reducing trackability of money increases the severity and frequency of collusive crimes.

Reducing trackability and improving the velocity of money *does* do this, but it's a side effect of the more important (and wider spread) effect of useful forms of money: increasing the severity and frequency of all kinds of collusion and cooperation! This is what money is for -- exchange. That criminal exchange uses DBS is just saying that criminal exchange is a form of exchange.

In mean time, managing the out-of-control government sector is your civic duty, to your less intelligent wives,

Heh...I'd be afraid of saying this if I were married or ever planning to be :) On an archived list, no less... :)

You need a coherent argument on this problem. You need measures within the DBS technology itself, to address the need. Opponents of DBS will raise all these demagogic arguments. You'll be hooted off the podium.

This technology is layered (ooh, bad word to use in relation to money and payment systems :). I think you will agree with me that the correct place for financial restraints (particularly voluntary ones, for auditing purposes, which IMO are the most important -- it allows you to say you are doing something, specify how it can be measured, and then have it measured, rather than just having some vague after-the-fact threat of enforcement if they catch you) on digital token money is not at the following layers: * Sub-atomic layer * Atomic layer * Hardware layer * Network connection layer and you seem to be making the case that it doesn't belong at the human/legal layer. However, there are two layers in the middle: * application (core DBS protocols, etc.) and * presentation (graphical clients, etc.) I believe the correct place for any voluntary restraints on DBS money is not at the DBS protocol layer, but at a higher level. This can be built into the clients people choose to use for managing their money, generate auditing reports, etc. This provides people with the freedom to use clients tailored to their legal requirements -- a corporation's internal financial system should be far more complicated and constrained than my personal wallet -- and makes it relatively easy for everything to interoperate. You can even design things at the levels higher than the DBS level to escrow parts of coins with third parties, this requiring their participation or approval for any transaction -- sort of a "registered DBS system". If you believe taxes are a worthwhile thing, a government could mandage the use of such a system where the IRS was a party to each and every transaction. This would work perfectly well technically, and would not compromise the integrity of the protocols -- it's just a business decision on the part of an issuer of electronic cash. It's easy to see how this could work with insurance schemes, split control of coins, etc. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com> Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'