from: Strategic Investment 824 East Baltimore Street Baltimore, MD 21202 July 25, 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------ ---------- BEHIND THE LINES BY Jack Wheeler BAD GUYS Let's suppose, "just suppose," that the president has placed you in charge of a super-secret spy agency conducting electronic intelligence, the National Security Agency; and suppose that he ordered you to trace the activities of those who have replaced the Communists as official "Bad Guys," "Enemies of the State:" tax evaders, money launderers, and drug traffickers. So you decide to pull one of the great intelligence coups of modern times, by having the NSA become a major provider of banking software. Working through a cutout company skilled in managing money in support of U.S. covert operations, and using a modified version of sophisticated tracking software provided by the Justice Department's intelligence service (OSI, Office of Special Investigations), you sell your product to financial institutions around the globe - not telling them, of course, that what they're buying has an electronic "backdoor" giving the NSA computerized access to the intimate details of their customers' financial transactions. In less than a decade, your client list includes many of the world's leading banks. The banks behind the Visa smart card for the Atlanta Olympics, and those soon to offer Internet banking are your clients too. Yes, now you'll do your patriotic duty and get the Bad Guys - and anyone else you decide is an Enemy of the State. We're just suppposing, you understand. THE BLACK NET A worldwide communications system, accessible to anyone on the Inter- net, of completely anonymous and unbreakable encrypted messages and transactions: That's the vision of the Black Net being created by "crypto-anarchist" computer programmers. Using programs like "MixMaster" and anonymous re-mailer computer servers that nest encryted messages in encrypted envelopes, the Black Net will defeat the NSA's ability to trace communications to their source via traffic analysis or any other method. Black Net banks could offer totally untraceable and anonymous transact- tions with the identity of the account holder unknown even to the bank- - rendering any attempts, such as those imagined above, to get the Bad Guys useless. As economist Richard Rahn puts it: "The information tech- nology of the 80s (cheap faxes & photocopiers, satellite radio, etc.) doomed an government's attempt to have a monopoly on the supply of money." ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------- Beat State!