anonymity and e-cash
The NSA's research report on e-cash says: "The ideal situation (from the point of view of privacy advocates) is that neither payer nor payee should know the identity of the other. This makes remote transactions using electronic cash totally anonymous: no one knows where Alice spends her money and who pays her. "It turns out that this is too much to ask: there is no way in such a scenario for the consumer to obtain a signed receipt. Thus we are forced to settle for payer anonymity." Keeping in mind I am only a lawyer, my skim of Schneier (2d ed.) didn't illuminate. The discussion of digital cash seemed to assume no payee anonymity. But the immediate previous section of dining cryptographers involved (it seemed) recipient untraceability. Is payee anonymity technically possible? Under what conditions? If so, is the issue social, e.g., as NSA notes, the lack of a signed receipt? Thanks, Lee
On Wed, 12 Feb 1997, Lee Tien wrote:
Is payee anonymity technically possible? Under what conditions?
Yes. In addition to having "money changers" play an anonymizing role, one can use an anonymous bank account. Contrary to intuition, banks might be willing to set these up with cryptographic safeguards. See http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/oceanno.htm#ENDNOTE286 which describes otherwise unpublished work by Brands (by permission). == The above may have been dictated via Dragon Dictate 2.52 voice recognition. Please be alert for unintentional word substitutions. A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin@law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here.
participants (2)
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Lee Tien
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Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law