----------

From: azur Subject: Re: extortion via digital cash Date: Tuesday, October 15, 1996 2:18PM

<SNIP>

Although Digicash's ecash offers anonymity to the payor it does not to the payee. The reasons have to do with the way coins are blinded. So LE could, with the bank's cooperation, easily associate the two sides of a transaction. This was intentional on Chaum's part, either for moral or practical political considerations. Its probably only a relatively minor patch to allow one ecash purse (the kidnapper's) to generate the blind token values so that another (similarly patched) purse (the vicitim's) can submit them to the mint and return the minted coins to the kidnapper (e.g., by posting on a popular Usenet group). In this scenario the only reasonable way left to track the money is via linkage (the size and timing of deposits and withdrawls in the kidnapper's account).

I would tend to think that if you held on to the money long enough, you would thwart them tracking it via linkage-especially once it becomes more commonplace to do electronic transactions on the Net. Actually, if you wait long enough, you likely will run the risk of there being a crackdown on nym servers, remailers, etc, and maybe even specialy designed cancel-bots on usenet. /sb