I suspect I'm not the only one getting weary of going around and around on this issue, so I'll confine my response to just one point: At 3:37 AM 10/11/95, Bryce wrote:

...

Who any of these entities "really" are is irrelevant to me. (I don't even know if Hal Finney, who I met once a few years ago, is the "real" Hal Finney, nor do I really care.)

Well and good, Tim, but you *do* care if the entity calling itself "Hal Finney" is being surrounded by the Man in the Channel ("Mitch") and all of your communications with that entity are under Mitch's control. For example, you may choose to enter a contract with the entity calling itself "Hal Finney", and provide some sort of consulting service to it in exchange for 10,000 cyberbucks. If Mitch is actually in control then he could easily steal both the output of your consultation *and* Hal's 10,000 cyberbucks and leave the two of you hating each other.

Nope. au contraire, negatory. I *do not* care if the entity calling itself "Hal Finney" is being surrounded by an MITM. Only "Hal Finney the Key" can read messages I encrypt to the public key I got from him long ago, so if the "Hal + MITM" can do so, they are effectively one and the same. (Not really, in some other senses, but far beyond anything simple crypto can handle.) --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."