According to the article at <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010412/wr/tech_fraud_dc_1.html>, the International Chamber of Commerce's Commercial Crime Bureau and Cybercrime Unit - which apparently "polices all financial and intellectual property rights breaches on the Internet" - has identified "the problem with the Internet", specifically - "The problem with the Net is that it is not secure because Internet service providers don't run identity checks on their clients . . . [i]t is very easy to set up an email account and web page on an ISP offering free web space and no checks are done on the people setting them up." That's funny. I was just thinking that the problem with the Internet is that it gives every control freak with a tinfoil badge and an AOL account the idea that they ought to "police" people and things they've never seen or heard of. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "Organized crime is the price we pay for organization." -- Raymond Chandler
At 10:36 AM -0700 4/12/01, Greg Broiles wrote:
According to the article at <http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010412/wr/tech_fraud_dc_1.html>, the International Chamber of Commerce's Commercial Crime Bureau and Cybercrime Unit - which apparently "polices all financial and intellectual property rights breaches on the Internet" - has identified "the problem with the Internet", specifically -
"The problem with the Net is that it is not secure because Internet service providers don't run identity checks on their clients . . . [i]t is very easy to set up an email account and web page on an ISP offering free web space and no checks are done on the people setting them up."
That's funny. I was just thinking that the problem with the Internet is that it gives every control freak with a tinfoil badge and an AOL account the idea that they ought to "police" people and things they've never seen or heard of.
Also, we are seeing the effects of "concentration" (similar to "monoculture") in online marketplaces. A handful of highly-visible marketplaces are now being pursued by various leftist groups like the Wiesenthal Center and various rightist groups like the anti-abortion and Arab groups. More and more lawyers see chances for lawsuits . Various governments see that Yahoo and Ebay will back down if enough threats are levelled at them (we'll seize your assets, we'll arrest your officers when they vacation in our country, we'll deport your people from nearby countries if we can, we'll demand that the U.S. Government apply its many powers to force you to change, we'll get U.N. treaties to ban you). For example, where once there were thousands of small souvenir shops and bookstores selling "politically incorrect" material (Nazi memorability, Confederate flags, Paladin Press books, etc.), the trend in recent years has been for consolidation and concentration. (Needless to say, I am not a lefty arguing against the rights of companies and bookstores and such to consolidate. Just noting a trend which has important implications.) This makes Yahoo, Amazon, EBay the easy targets for lawsuits by foreign governments, lawsuits by PC groups in America, boycotts (which are OK, of course), and even direct actions against corporate officers. How long will it be before corporate offices at EBay are bombed because birth control stuff is sold on EBay? How long before the President of Amazon is assassinated one night for "allowing" books like "The Satanic Verses" be sold on his system? These three companies are representative of the trend toward a corporation, readily traceable to a physical location, acting as the "marketplace" location. Even more abstractly, Napster only distributed an _indexing_ application and then provided a forum for indices to be published. And yet what has happened with Napster is and was predictable. (If you set up a music pirating system, as seen by others, and paint your name and address on your back, you _will_ be sued. A bunch of us pointed this out at a CP physical meeting in early 2000, when Napster was just starting to become known.) There's a better solution to this "big targets problem": peer-to-peer, a la Gnutella, Mojo, etc. No identifiable nexus of corporate control. Online clearing. Reputation intermediaries. Digital cash (not strictly needed, if N (number of sellers and buyers) is large enough and there is no central clearinghouse which can be sued.) Making the agora disappear into cyberspace, whether by sheer numbers of sellers and buyers (peer-to-peer) or by robust encryption (a la BlackNet) is an important goal. "The Theory of the Corporation" needs revisiting. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
I want to apply what I just wrote to the projects of some friends of ours: MojoNation and Zero Knowledge Systems. I say "friends" because long-term list members are either working for them, or founded them, or whatever. You all know what I mean. Caveat: I have not talked to principals at either company for a long time. I don't know what they're doing, or even if their companies still exist in the same form (same basic mission) as when I last talked to their principals. Consider these comments to be applicable to companies _like_ these companies. At 11:14 AM -0700 4/12/01, Tim May wrote:
This makes Yahoo, Amazon, EBay the easy targets for lawsuits by foreign governments, lawsuits by PC groups in America, boycotts (which are OK, of course), and even direct actions against corporate officers. How long will it be before corporate offices at EBay are bombed because birth control stuff is sold on EBay? How long before the President of Amazon is assassinated one night for "allowing" books like "The Satanic Verses" be sold on his system?
These three companies are representative of the trend toward a corporation, readily traceable to a physical location, acting as the "marketplace" location. Even more abstractly, Napster only distributed an _indexing_ application and then provided a forum for indices to be published. And yet what has happened with Napster is and was predictable.
(If you set up a music pirating system, as seen by others, and paint your name and address on your back, you _will_ be sued. A bunch of us pointed this out at a CP physical meeting in early 2000, when Napster was just starting to become known.)
There's a better solution to this "big targets problem": peer-to-peer, a la Gnutella, Mojo, etc. No identifiable nexus of corporate control. Online clearing. Reputation intermediaries. Digital cash (not strictly needed, if N (number of sellers and buyers) is large enough and there is no central clearinghouse which can be sued.)
Making the agora disappear into cyberspace, whether by sheer numbers of sellers and buyers (peer-to-peer) or by robust encryption (a la BlackNet) is an important goal.
"The Theory of the Corporation" needs revisiting.
This is what is missing from the plans of so many of these "Cypherpunks-interesting" companies: they start developing some ideas of how to implement true untraceability, and doing commerce in uncoercible (transactions cannot be physically coerced) ways, then they BLOW IT: The blow it by incorporating in above-board ways, readily-traceable by any constable or narc or Fed who wants to find their corporate offices in Quebec or Mountain View or whatever village constitutes the capital of Anguilla. Which means none of these entities can exploit the truly rich markets out there. Markets for online porn of various kinds, markets for "specialty" interests, a free and open and unfettered market in Nazi memorabilia and other such newly-verboten items, and, the gold mine, markets in medical information, credit information, and other such data bases which governments seek to hold monopolies on. (Governments ain't stupid. Being the official Mafia, they know the value of regulating and controlling data bases.) For those of you who don't fully appreciate what I am getting at, being newcomers, let me move away from such banalities as "kiddie porn" market--though this is a real market which any truly untraceable tools will facillitate, obviously--and focus instead on the "credit rating market." Alice defaulted on a loan to Bob some years ago. Do-gooders in the United States decided that Alice's "credit records" should be forced to "forget" this item after some period set by legislative decree. Charles, who was told by Bob by that Alice defaulted on a loan, is ordered by the government that he may not reveal this information to Darva, who is considering making a loan to Alice and is willing to pay Charles a fee for supplying her with what he knows of Alice's past habits regarding loans. This is, in a nutshell, the essence of the "Fair Credit Reporting Act." This is what laymen, who usually think it a good idea, mean when they say "Your credit records only go back 5 years." Cypherpunks know that the technologies exist to support bypasses of such contra-freedom laws. Usually called "data havens," though Bruce Sterling got it wrong (no insult meant to him) when he predicted in "Islands in the Net" that such data havens would be on Caribbean islands or in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Physical security is only the equivalent of a few dozen bits' worth of cryptographic security. (At the time "Islands in the Net" appeared, in 1988, I had already presented the "BlackNet" crypto scheme to my Silicon Valley friends Phil Salin, Marc Stiegler, Randy Farmer, Chip Morningstar, and a bunch of the Xanadu/AMiX folks. It did in cyberspace, a la Vinge's "True Names," what Sterling was simultaneously setting out in "Islands.") (As to the morality of such bypasses, why is the business of government or anyone else to tell Bob or Charles that it is illegal and punishable by fines and imprisonment to tell Darva that Alice cheated Bob at some time in the past? It isn't. OK, so the crypto tools really do exist to enable "free markets in cyberspace." So it this what Mojo and ZKS will do? Is this what Vince Cate in Anguilla is able to do? Why is Mojo not becoming the pirate music capital of cyberspace? Why is ZKS not advertising its software to those interested in nude photos of youngsters? Why is Anguilla not the credit rating capital of the world/ Because each is readily locatable and targettable. These are at least part of the reasons. (I admit that other reasons may be "Because Jim is not interested in being the pirate music capital, because the shareholders of ZKS choose not be child pornographers, because Vince doesn't want to be the credit rating center of the world.") The important point is that even if any of these ventures _wanted_ to use their technologies as described above, THEY ARE TOO VISIBLE. Jim McCoy understands this quite well...and yet he located his operation in a visible way, which surprises me. Austin and Hammie were told by both Lucky Green and myself, and maybe others , that ZKS was painting a giant "Sue Me!" and/or "Raid Me!" target on their backs by incorporating and locating in a major Canadian city. (Lest anyone think Canada is "more tolerant" than the U.S., as some folks periodically claim, look at the Homulka/Teale censorship, look at the success of Andrea Dworkin and her feminazi cohorts in getting a bookstore shut down, look at the lack of anything comparable to the Bill of Rights in strength of precedent, and look at the recent crypto laws being proposed or which have been actually passed. The notion that ZKS will be able to say "Fuck off" to Mounties who arrive to investigate an extortion threat agains the Canadian PM or who have learned that FreedomNet is being used to trade child porn, is laughable.) As for Vince and Anguilla, I wish him well. But a country which bans the importation of something so innocuous as copies of "Playboy" magazine, and which is said to be de facto ruled the "the seven families," is hardly a data haven by any definition. (We don't hear much out of Anguilla anyway, so maybe it's days as a "Cypherpunks capital" are gone, not that it was ever really that.) So, what's the solution? The solution is that the technology clearly exists to allow entities to reside in cyberspace. What is lacking, as always, is the means to collect untraceable digital cash. (Chaum has sometimes argued that only _buyer-untraceable_ DC is needed...clearly a bidirectionally untraceable system, "true" digital cash, is needed. Both Doug Barnes and Ian Goldberg explained several years ago how such a TDC system could be built. Ian demonstrated a version of such a TDC system at a CP physical meeting, circa 1997.) Anyone contemplating building such a system, or entity, or cybercorporation, should think long and hard about the wisdom of ever having an identifiable nexus of attack. Money must be collected in untraceable ways. This is what I meant about it being time to rethink the theory of the corporation. Where once a corporation existed to both protect the rights of shareholders (against lawsuits and partners having to pay for losses) and to enable the group participation of many workers, corporations for the things Cypherpunks think are interesting is just a bad idea. And given the growing trend toward trying to prosecute the V.P of Yahoo-Europe because some bit of Nazi history was sold to some German citizen, etc., corporations are becoming a liability in cyberspace. The answer is to vanish into cyberspace. Not an easy task, maybe, given the state of today's tools, but the long term trend. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Even though I'm PLUNKED, and he is currently on a lawyer-hate rampage... Tim May said:
For those of you who don't fully appreciate what I am getting at, being newcomers, let me move away from such banalities as "kiddie porn" market--though this is a real market which any truly untraceable tools will facilitate, obviously--and focus instead on the "credit rating market."
Ah, yes. The (illicit) "credit rating market." Thank you for the "Dick & Jane" version. I may not be the smartest kid in the class, but I am going to skip a grade, and address the value proposition Mr. May is *really* talking about, although with a twist of legitimacy: Found in my inbox: ======================== > 1. MERCHANT INFORMATION BANKING - "Open Source Intelligence Haven" > STEELE: http://www.oss.net/infoMerchantBank.html We already have an OSINT prototype community. > The world intelligence market is going private and adopting a distributed > model, most relevant intelligence information is human, IS NOT ONLINE, not > SIGINT, and is trapped in the private sector. IT'S NOT SECRET, EITHER. > The problem is old > notions of the > intelligence (COLD WAR) keep private||government apart. "credit > The private rating > intelligence market market"---> is $300 billion. China, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, > South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom are already > privatizing adopting OSINT tactics, according to Steele. Steele, March 23 Letter to President: http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/LettertothePresident.doc)
Making the agora disappear into cyberspace, whether by sheer numbers of sellers and buyers (peer-to-peer) or by robust encryption (a la BlackNet) is an important goal.
Agora, hm. > The problem with open source intelligence havens > is that the information has to be of strategic relevance and time > actionable. If you give me the secret recipe to KFC, I'm still nothing > without the red-and-white-bucket. > I have to be able to tap the source. > : critical mass and critical trust. > : analysis/value
So, what's the solution?
The solution is that the technology clearly exists to allow entities to reside in cyberspace. What is lacking, as always, is the means to collect untraceable digital cash.
I find open source information banking/trading/merchant (whatever) systems problematic propositions, beyond anonymous cash, especially viewed in light of this hypothetical on a distributed open source intelligence haven-brokerage. i.e. How do you set yourself up as an anonymous, neutral, info-Switzerland? ...How will you obtain critical mass and critical trust? ...Where is your back-door, infosec accountability if you are nothing but digital wind? ...How do you set up a buy-sell marketplace for intelligence -- the value of which cannot be determined prior to analysis, even where there is a robust reputation capital metric in place? ...How do you enforce polycentric merchant society rules in the context of an anonymous transactional system? ...Requirements for admission? ...Quality control? Reputational systems?...What is your post-transactional enforcement mechanism? ...MUST you have anon cash? (Just lotsa questions.) On the other hand, take Steele's concept, turn it into an distributed ghosty "INTELLAGORA" (?) to facilitate and tap these new public-private and private-private transcontinental intelligence flows, attain critical mass, and you would have an exceptional value proposition. Nothing happens without a value proposition, and there is only one lucrative "live" information market: the intelligence habit. Whoever gets in the middle of this public<-->private intelligence collision stands to make serious bank. There is no legacy system, so, if doable, it's load and lock-in. In comparison, the likes of ZKS and MojoNation seem small footsteps -- not just in terms of the potential market, but also in terms of the opportunity for the mass incorporation of cypherpunk concepts. (This is not "subversive" hypothetical. Western/Allied intelligence communities would be the primary benefactors and contractors.) ~Aimee
You realize those are the exact same questions I've been asking of the crypto-anarchist since day one? Careful, you're going to be agreeing with me pretty soon... On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, Aimee Farr wrote:
I find open source information banking/trading/merchant (whatever) systems problematic propositions, beyond anonymous cash, especially viewed in light of this hypothetical on a distributed open source intelligence haven-brokerage.
i.e. How do you set yourself up as an anonymous, neutral, info-Switzerland? ...How will you obtain critical mass and critical trust? ...Where is your back-door, infosec accountability if you are nothing but digital wind? ...How do you set up a buy-sell marketplace for intelligence -- the value of which cannot be determined prior to analysis, even where there is a robust reputation capital metric in place? ...How do you enforce polycentric merchant society rules in the context of an anonymous transactional system? ...Requirements for admission? ...Quality control? Reputational systems?...What is your post-transactional enforcement mechanism? ...MUST you have anon cash? (Just lotsa questions.)
____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 1:51 PM -0500 4/13/01, Aimee Farr wrote:
Even though I'm PLUNKED, and he is currently on a lawyer-hate rampage...
Tim May said:
For those of you who don't fully appreciate what I am getting at, being newcomers, let me move away from such banalities as "kiddie porn" market--though this is a real market which any truly untraceable tools will facilitate, obviously--and focus instead on the "credit rating market."
Ah, yes. The (illicit) "credit rating market."
If you claim to know about it, how do you actually know so _little_ about it? Yes, I have your post filtered into my Trash folder. Sometimes I look, sometimes I don't. For someone who presumably graduated from a real law school and passes a real bar exam, you have a demonstrated tendency to ramble and just "ditz" your way through arguments. Do you ever write in complete sentences, in complete paragraphs, arguing complete points?
Thank you for the "Dick & Jane" version. I may not be the smartest kid in the class, but I am going to skip a grade, and address the value proposition Mr. May is *really* talking about, although with a twist of legitimacy:
Found in my inbox: ========================
1. MERCHANT INFORMATION BANKING - "Open Source Intelligence Haven" STEELE: http://www.oss.net/infoMerchantBank.html
"A twist of legitimacy"? Some kind of appeal to authority/ As it happens, I've known Robert Steele since his first got invited to the Hackers Conference...must have been around 1993-4 or so. Talked to him at length. Several other list members know him, too. He's been pushing this Del Torto-esque "hackers will be our real agents" project for a while. Nothing wrong with the "open intelligence" idea...except that it's not his idea. The intelligence agencies of the world have been vacuum sweeping the Net since its earliest days. I don't mean in some paranoid sense, but in the sense of what is readily known. The "Analyst" project at the CIA, for example, has been going on since at least the early 80s, monitoring publically visible (and perhaps less visible stuff gotten from the NSA, DIA, NRO, etc.) material. We knew by 1993 that the NSA and CIA had folks reading our list...I talked to a couple of these readers at the Hackers Conference in Lake Tahoe and at a conference at Asilomar. "Open source intelligence" is just his buzz phrase for "observe what's happening."
Steele, March 23 Letter to President: http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/LettertothePresident.doc)
Making the agora disappear into cyberspace, whether by sheer numbers of sellers and buyers (peer-to-peer) or by robust encryption (a la BlackNet) is an important goal.
Agora, hm.
Learn our terms as we learn your terms.
I find open source information banking/trading/merchant (whatever) systems problematic propositions, beyond anonymous cash, especially viewed in light of this hypothetical on a distributed open source intelligence haven-brokerage.
i.e. How do you set yourself up as an anonymous, neutral, info-Switzerland? ...How will you obtain critical mass and critical trust? ...Where is your back-door, infosec accountability if you are nothing but digital wind? ...How do you set up a buy-sell marketplace for intelligence -- the value of which cannot be determined prior to analysis, even where there is a robust reputation capital metric in place? ...How do you enforce polycentric merchant society rules in the context of an anonymous transactional system? ...Requirements for admission? ...Quality control? Reputational systems?...What is your post-transactional enforcement mechanism? ...MUST you have anon cash? (Just lotsa questions.)
Read the hundreds of articles on these matters. Read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State," by Bruce Benson. Read David Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," and his other books. Read... The point is, Aimee, _read the background material_. Then you can ask specific questions, instead of just throwing a dozen or two dozen points of confusion you have against the wall and asking me to make it all clear to you. As it is, you have yet to contribute anything interesting, at least that I have seen. I admit I don't see most of your contributions these days, but the lack of follow-up from others tells me that others are also not finding much of substance. Given that you write in a confusing, ditzy way, perhaps they just can't extract the nuggets from the mud. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Tim May <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
The "Analyst" project at the CIA, for example, has been going on since at least the early 80s, monitoring publically visible (and perhaps less visible stuff gotten from the NSA, DIA, NRO, etc.) material.
We knew by 1993 that the NSA and CIA had folks reading our list...I talked to a couple of these readers at the Hackers Conference in Lake Tahoe and at a conference at Asilomar.
My personal rule of thumb is that I don't say anything both online and off that I wouldn't mind seeing on the front page of the local paper. I can remember being at a CFP a few years ago and having some beer and pretzels with some guys from the CIA who read my list. Then later I went to a party at Declan's home and ran into a few more Feds and they commented on how much they liked my list. My general impressions- The CIA and NSA people were bright and on the ball but the FBI guys seemed more like your run of the mill cop types. The Custom's guy seemed alright too, we walked out together and as we were walking down the street (In Washington, DC at night- Declan's 'hood seemed safe enough) I noticed he had a fanny pack on. I commented that at least we'd be safe if attacked- But he opened it up and just showed me his badge and wallet. He said left his gun at home as it was too heavy to carry around. I thought everybody knew the feds read this stuff? Regards, Matt- ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, 2175 Bayfield Drive, Columbus, OH 43229 (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **************************************************************************
Tim May wrote:
At 1:51 PM -0500 4/13/01, Aimee Farr wrote:
Even though I'm PLUNKED, and he is currently on a lawyer-hate rampage...
Tim May said:
For those of you who don't fully appreciate what I am getting at, being newcomers, let me move away from such banalities as "kiddie porn" market--though this is a real market which any truly untraceable tools will facilitate, obviously--and focus instead on the "credit rating market."
Ah, yes. The (illicit) "credit rating market."
If you claim to know about it, how do you actually know so _little_ about it? Yes, I have your post filtered into my Trash folder. Sometimes I look, sometimes I don't. For someone who presumably graduated from a real law school and passes a real bar exam, you have a demonstrated tendency to ramble and just "ditz" your way through arguments. Do you ever write in complete sentences, in complete paragraphs, arguing complete points?
I agree with you, I did not put forth my argument well, and I was lazy to snip out context from several offlist conversations. And, you are correct, it is difficult for me to make a compelling argument, due to the fact that I am a far cry from an expert in this area. These are challenging concepts. However, with respect, I did take on a mega-proposition for the application of your concepts.
Thank you for the "Dick & Jane" version. I may not be the smartest kid in the class, but I am going to skip a grade, and address the value proposition Mr. May is *really* talking about, although with a twist of legitimacy:
Found in my inbox: ========================
1. MERCHANT INFORMATION BANKING - "Open Source Intelligence Haven" STEELE: http://www.oss.net/infoMerchantBank.html
"A twist of legitimacy"? Some kind of appeal to authority/
An appeal for a contract. I was trying to hypothesize a value proposition for a legitimate application of these technologies. What you proposed, via a "credit rating market," is an open source information mercantile system. I was looking for a better market, which attaches high value to information: intelligence. I wonder if these applications would find the most relevance in the intelligence sector, despite thoughts of subversive applications. If there is not a value proposition for an information marketplace between the government and the private sector, there could be a value proposition within the private sector intelligence channels, moving closer to your "credit rating market" proposition.
As it happens, I've known Robert Steele since his first got invited to the Hackers Conference...must have been around 1993-4 or so. Talked to him at length. Several other list members know him, too. He's been pushing this Del Torto-esque "hackers will be our real agents" project for a while.
We do have some most recent evidence of this.
Nothing wrong with the "open intelligence" idea...except that it's not his idea.
However, Steele does have an interesting prototype community. Furthermore, he has explored private sector opportunities as the intelligence community restructures and privatizes.
The intelligence agencies of the world have been vacuum sweeping the Net since its earliest days. I don't mean in some paranoid sense, but in the sense of what is readily known.
But much strategically valuable information is not online. I said "NOT ONLINE." The intelligence needed is in regard to third-world countries and hotspots. This insight is damn sure not on the Net. I can't find the intricacies in regard to [fill-in-the-blank] on the Net. There are some things you can't mine. Even where you can, it's raw information, stale, and not analysis. Furthermore, I would think this information is often of little strategic value.
The "Analyst" project at the CIA, for example, has been going on since at least the early 80s, monitoring publically visible (and perhaps less visible stuff gotten from the NSA, DIA, NRO, etc.) material.
Yes. But when they get this information... "what does it mean?" They are drowning in information that they can't make sense of. Any such an endeavor would target information that is NOT SIPHONABLE AND OUTSIDE OF EXISTING INTELLIGENCE FLOWS. The endeavor would tap the private intelligence sector, developing nonexistent intelligence channels to tap private experts, agents, analysts, primary sources, etc. - information available, but for a price.
We knew by 1993 that the NSA and CIA had folks reading our list...I talked to a couple of these readers at the Hackers Conference in Lake Tahoe and at a conference at Asilomar.
Well, in the unlikely event the NSA and CIA folks are still around: They need LESS noise - more private analysis and sourcepoint intelligence. The problem with the US intelligence community, as seen by many, is that they are over-focused on mass mining strategies and related technologies, and need to re-focus on securing intelligence from the private sector. Intelligence on resources, corporations, ETC. now that the Cold War is kaput.
"Open source intelligence" is just his buzz phrase for "observe what's happening."
That is an over-simplification, but yes. Intelligence is not headlines. To a large extent, "what's happening" is not analyzed correctly, because the intelligence community lacks sufficient expert analysis to cope with the dataload. This capability is in the private sector. These information flows, between the government sector and the private sector, are unmapped. (I know I am just mouthing Steele's arguments, but I find them compelling.)
Steele, March 23 Letter to President: http://www.oss.net/Papers/white/LettertothePresident.doc)
Making the agora disappear into cyberspace, whether by sheer numbers of sellers and buyers (peer-to-peer) or by robust encryption (a la BlackNet) is an important goal.
Agora, hm.
Learn our terms as we learn your terms.
I'M TRYING.
I find open source information banking/trading/merchant (whatever) systems problematic propositions, beyond anonymous cash, especially viewed in light of this hypothetical on a distributed open source intelligence haven-brokerage.
i.e. How do you set yourself up as an anonymous, neutral, info-Switzerland? ...How will you obtain critical mass and critical trust? ...Where is your back-door, infosec accountability if you are nothing but digital wind? ...How do you set up a buy-sell marketplace for intelligence -- the value of which cannot be determined prior to analysis, even where there is a robust reputation capital metric in place? ...How do you enforce polycentric merchant society rules in the context of an anonymous transactional system? ...Requirements for admission? ...Quality control? Reputational systems?...What is your post-transactional enforcement mechanism? ...MUST you have anon cash? (Just lotsa questions.)
Read the hundreds of articles on these matters. Read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State," by Bruce Benson. Read David Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," and his other books. Read...
The point is, Aimee, _read the background material_.
Then you can ask specific questions, instead of just throwing a dozen or two dozen points of confusion you have against the wall and asking me to make it all clear to you.
Tim, I didn't expect you to make it all clear to me. (i.e., "Just lotsa questions." Indeed, I have some answers, but thank you for the book recs.) I was merely reflecting that anonymous cash is not a cure-all, and that it might not even necessary for a highly sensitive information marketplace. I was questioning the value proposition that you posed in the context of a more sophisticated model -- an admittedly fantastical one. Finally, I questioned if it was so fantastical, given Steele (et. al.) and thoughts of functioning OSINT communities.
As it is, you have yet to contribute anything interesting, at least that I have seen. I admit I don't see most of your contributions these days, but the lack of follow-up from others tells me that others are also not finding much of substance. Given that you write in a confusing, ditzy way, perhaps they just can't extract the nuggets from the mud.
I can understand how conversations are frustrating for you, especially mine, due to the level of my naiveti. Still, you proffered an illicit "credit rating market" as a metaphor for an information mercantile system tapping private, analytical intelligence -- intelligence that is not online, not siphonable or subject to mining, and which lies outside legacy intelligence channels. Is my value proposition so different than yours? I could argue that it targets information of like character, in a like system, between parties of like needs. It remains to be seen if your "crypto-anarchy" can find a sustainable value proposition. I was trying to envision one, usually necessary for somebody to "do something." (This is your big bitch, no?) You are a prickly, philosophical, violence-inclined prick tease that won't put out for me. Clearly, I stand little chance of EVER getting into your intellectual pants. Give me some indication of how good your dick really is, because I'm thinking it isn't worth continued loss of blood on my end to even entertain thoughts of pursuing such a long-term, high-risk, book-reading, flesh-eating endeavor. However, you have looked at this too long to have not considered intelligence applications. If you say it's a really dumb idea, there is probably some truth to it. ~ Aimee
At 2:59 PM -0500 4/14/01, Aimee Farr wrote:
I agree with you, I did not put forth my argument well, and I was lazy to snip out context from several offlist conversations. And, you are correct, it is difficult for me to make a compelling argument, due to the fact that I am a far cry from an expert in this area. These are challenging concepts. However, with respect, I did take on a mega-proposition for the application of your concepts.
Eschew grandiloquence.
"A twist of legitimacy"? Some kind of appeal to authority/
An appeal for a contract. I was trying to hypothesize a value proposition for a legitimate application of these technologies.
You'll need to translate this into straightforward English, please.
What you proposed, via a "credit rating market," is an open source information mercantile system. I was looking for a better market, which attaches high value to information: intelligence.
What you were "looking for" is irrelevant to what I wrote about. You can try hiring me as your personal consultant, at my usual daily rate, and I will try to put something together that is closer to what you're "looking for." In any case, the straightforward moving of credit ratings to a place where the Fair Credit Reporting Act and other such statist measures cannot reach is a much, much better example of the regulatory arbitrage issues of interest here than some nebulous "open source intelligence" project such as Robert Steele and OSS have been advocating. More power to him if he pulls off something interesting and important, but so far it is smoke and mirrors and vague claims.
I wonder if these applications would find the most relevance in the intelligence sector, despite thoughts of subversive applications.
"I wonder, I wonder, I wonder..." Do some background reading, think about the issues, and actually begin participating in a meaningful way in the debate and then maybe you won't appear to be such an airhead.
If there is not a value proposition for an information marketplace between the government and the private sector, there could be a value proposition within the private sector intelligence channels, moving closer to your "credit rating market" proposition.
English, please. Or at least Ebonics.
Read the hundreds of articles on these matters. Read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State," by Bruce Benson. Read David Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," and his other books. Read...
The point is, Aimee, _read the background material_.
Then you can ask specific questions, instead of just throwing a dozen or two dozen points of confusion you have against the wall and asking me to make it all clear to you.
Tim, I didn't expect you to make it all clear to me. (i.e., "Just lotsa questions." Indeed, I have some answers, but thank you for the book recs.) I was merely reflecting that anonymous cash is not a cure-all, and that it might not even necessary for a highly sensitive information marketplace.
I never claimed it was a cure-all. None of us has. It's part of an overall approach, outlook, worldview. As for it being "necessary for a highly sensitive information marketplace," it depends. No doubt within the CIA it is not needed, though the equivalent of cash is still used (CPU hours allottable to various users, signatures to gain access to data, etc.) As for outsiders, imagine buying "sensitive information" without untraceable cash...whoops, it's a sting, and the Saudi Royal Guard is on its way. Or Jeff Gordon is about to raid your house. You seem not to have thought about these issues. You need to do some reading before you make a fool of yourself further.
I was questioning the value proposition that you posed in the context of a more sophisticated model -- an admittedly fantastical one. Finally, I questioned if it was so fantastical, given Steele (et. al.) and thoughts of functioning OSINT communities.
I can't understand your writing. I'd normally say "So sue me," except lawyers like you typically try this.
You are a prickly, philosophical, violence-inclined prick tease that won't put out for me. Clearly, I stand little chance of EVER getting into your intellectual pants. Give me some indication of how good your dick really is, because I'm thinking it isn't worth continued loss of blood on my end to even entertain thoughts of pursuing such a long-term, high-risk, book-reading, flesh-eating endeavor.
* P L O N K *, again, and this time, I expect for good. People who can't write clearly and yet who use such language as you use above do not deserve to be taken seriously. I thought I'd seen it all. At least now I can "Aimee" to the pantheon: Detweiler, Vulis, Cohen, Toto, and Aimee. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 09:41 PM 4/14/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:
At 2:59 PM -0500 4/14/01, Aimee Farr wrote:
An appeal for a contract. I was trying to hypothesize a value proposition for a legitimate application of these technologies.
You'll need to translate this into straightforward English, please.
She wants to know what it's good for, how it would apply/how to apply it in real life. Gee, Tim, wtf? Do you expect a lawyer to get a Phd. in physics to receive gratis approval to (possibly) defend of a physicist?
English, please. Or at least Ebonics.
yo g, lady gots ta no tha pay, howzit gonna werk out in tha hood, ya dig? Reese
On Sat, 14 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
If there is not a value proposition for an information marketplace between the government and the private sector, there could be a value proposition within the private sector intelligence channels, moving closer to your "credit rating market" proposition.
English, please. Or at least Ebonics.
Her point, Tim, is that she doubts such a thing will ever be deployed widely or accepted, because she can't see a way for someone to make money at it. As presented, I think she's probably right. Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract. And "reputation capital" that would counteract that point to some extent depends on maintaining a consistent traceable pseudonym as someone who does something illegal, for decades, without getting linked to it. Bear
At 11:30 AM -0700 4/15/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sat, 14 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
If there is not a value proposition for an information marketplace between the government and the private sector, there could be a value proposition within the private sector intelligence channels, moving closer to your "credit rating market" proposition.
English, please. Or at least Ebonics.
Her point, Tim, is that she doubts such a thing will ever be deployed widely or accepted, because she can't see a way for someone to make money at it.
As presented, I think she's probably right. Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Widespread black markets, for drugs, betting, etc., suggest otherwise. There are many markets out there which do not rely on the official court system to enforce contracts for. Besides Mafia markets, there are international trade systems which typically don't invoke the laws of Fiji or Botswana or even the U.S. to make them work. In fact, most of our ordinary decisions and dealings are done "anarchically," from deciding which restaurants to visit to the buying of books and whatnot. The laws that exist have almost no role in such decisions (lest anyone cite "health standards" for restaurants, this is both secondary to decisions and has historically been handled without governmental regulation).
And "reputation capital" that would counteract that point to some extent depends on maintaining a consistent traceable pseudonym as someone who does something illegal, for decades, without getting linked to it.
As with Aimee, you haven't thought outside the box. You being a lawyer larvae, and Aimee being an official lawyer, is this something that _comes_ from being a lawyer, or is this something that causes a person to give up doing something real, like programming or designing chips, to _become_ a lawyer? --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
At 11:30 AM -0700 4/15/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
As presented, I think she's probably right. Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Widespread black markets, for drugs, betting, etc., suggest otherwise.
There are many markets out there which do not rely on the official court system to enforce contracts for.
This is true, but look at the mechanisms for enforcing contracts that they *do* use. Most of them are not compatible with anonymity, and only a few are compatible with pseudonymity. Mafia Bosses don't buy information from someone when they don't know where that someone lives. It's the exact same enforceability of contracts problem that other parts of society uses lawyers to deal with. Legbreakers or cops, basically they have the same job with regard to contract enforcement. There has to be a hook where someone who does a ripoff can be punished, or else there is no deal. When you talk about a one-time transaction, it pretty much has to involve something whose value can be ascertained ON THE SPOT. otherwise, there is either a continuing relationship that can't be unilaterally broken (ie, they know where you live) or there is no deal. The value of information (other than entertainment value) is not generally ascertainable on the spot, because if you don't have at least some of the information, you can't check something that claims to be the information. Also, you often have to do a couple days work figuring out information formats and problems before you can even do your checking against it, particularly with financial data.
Besides Mafia markets, there are international trade systems which typically don't invoke the laws of Fiji or Botswana or even the U.S. to make them work.
But which are generally not done anonymously. In these cases, there is no test of a protocol's ability to protect pseudonymity from a determined opponent, nor of the willingness to do business anonymously or pseudonymously. Moreover, the determined opponent is often watching, even if no enforcement is attempted.
In fact, most of our ordinary decisions and dealings are done "anarchically," from deciding which restaurants to visit to the buying of books and whatnot.
So far I have seen no example of a non-contracted business agreement between people who are unable to identify each other, which extends beyond a single transaction. Basically one goes one way with his merchandise and the other goes the other way with her money, and it's over. There's no business relationship that's ongoing; if they ever meet again, it's just a coincidence. If the transaction is illegal, then any business relationship that may be formed is a liability to all participants; they never know when the lions are going to grab someone and when that happens, the lions usually find out everything that someone knows. Real business involves lasting relationships. You don't want to be owed money, or merchandise either, by someone who can just shed the pseudonym and disappear.
And "reputation capital" that would counteract that point to some extent depends on maintaining a consistent traceable pseudonym as someone who does something illegal, for decades, without getting linked to it.
As with Aimee, you haven't thought outside the box.
You being a lawyer larvae, and Aimee being an official lawyer, is this something that _comes_ from being a lawyer, or is this something that causes a person to give up doing something real, like programming or designing chips, to _become_ a lawyer?
Tim, I don't know why you're calling me "Lawyer larvae". I'm not in Law school, nor have I ever been. What Aimee and I both seem to be pointing out here is that while it is *possible* for people to do business anonymously/pseudonymously, a whole new economy would have to grow up that way in order for it to become routine. You are really and truly talking about building from scratch with effectively no interface to the way business is currently done. I can respect that, but keep in mind that all the peripheral mechanisms of the way business is currently done will be trying to stomp the "aberration" out. In order to grow an anonymous economy, you'd need literally decades of time during which there were few conflicts with any part of the established infrastructure, and so that the emerging system could grow its own traditions and customs and routines. Within that separate space, you could do business as you describe. But during the whole building time, and until the new economy's traditions and routines are reflected in a robust system with enforcement capabilities, almost any contact with the existing economy would be destructive. It would be like building in the outlands, beyond civilization entirely. It will happen, and it should; the laws governing it are the laws of mathematics and computability, and humankind will build the structures that those laws can support just as surely as humankind given the opportunity will occupy a new frontier. But I don't believe that it's going to have much to do with established business or extant business models. Its basic required infrastructure and traditions are fundamentally incompatible with all current legal codes and methods of doing business, and will be attacked by all current enforcement capabilities whenever and wherever detected. The "cipherspace outlands" will have to be built pretty much separate from current business and the laws that apply to it. Otherwise it'll take centuries instead of decades. Bear
At 02:06 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
When you talk about a one-time transaction, it pretty much has to involve something whose value can be ascertained ON THE SPOT. otherwise, there is either a continuing relationship that can't be unilaterally broken (ie, they know where you live) or there is
I think this is a bit short-sighted. Assume there is an anonymous seller who has established reputation capital over time for small transactions on the order of pennies. I may be willing to risk a ten-cent transaction (to purchase an illicit MP3 or somesuch) if the perceived reward is sufficient. If I am successful and word spreads that the seller is to be trusted, the amount people will be willing to risk larger amounts will presumably increase. Obviously there is the possibility for the seller to cut and run when the trust factor gets sufficiently high and transactions increase accordingly, but buyers aren't entirely dumb, so a rational buyer will take that into account. One factor is how many people at once are entering into transactions with the seller -- and that may not be knowable. If the seller goes bad, what is the time delay before the bad actor status can be known and published? Escrow agents and bonds posted by the seller can accelerate this process substantially. In order to grow an anonymous economy, you'd need literally decades
of time during which there were few conflicts with any part of the established infrastructure, and so that the emerging system could
Not so. You can grow it quickly, organically, in a much shorter time. You'd be right if you're talking about an entirely new economy, but not if you're talking about the more likely prospect: a system that gradually supplements the existing economy. It won't replace it, of course. Remember, one still buys a loaf of bread in meatspace. -Declan
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
At 02:06 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
When you talk about a one-time transaction, it pretty much has to involve something whose value can be ascertained ON THE SPOT. otherwise, there is either a continuing relationship that can't be unilaterally broken (ie, they know where you live) or there is
I think this is a bit short-sighted.
Assume there is an anonymous seller who has established reputation capital over time for small transactions on the order of pennies. I may be willing to risk a ten-cent transaction (to purchase an illicit MP3 or somesuch) if the perceived reward is sufficient. If I am successful and word spreads that the seller is to be trusted, the amount people will be willing to risk larger amounts will presumably increase.
And your possible motive for spreading the word about his reputation, which ties you to an illicit transaction, is what exactly? Bear
At 4:07 PM -0700 4/15/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
At 02:06 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
When you talk about a one-time transaction, it pretty much has to involve something whose value can be ascertained ON THE SPOT. otherwise, there is either a continuing relationship that can't be unilaterally broken (ie, they know where you live) or there is
I think this is a bit short-sighted.
Assume there is an anonymous seller who has established reputation capital over time for small transactions on the order of pennies. I may be willing to risk a ten-cent transaction (to purchase an illicit MP3 or somesuch) if the perceived reward is sufficient. If I am successful and word spreads that the seller is to be trusted, the amount people will be willing to risk larger amounts will presumably increase.
And your possible motive for spreading the word about his reputation, which ties you to an illicit transaction, is what exactly?
Bear
Ray, or "Bear," you really need to think about these things more deeply. There are many ways in which a buyer can signal approval...without even linking himself to a specific transaction. (Which is likely, in this "ten-cent transction" to be of any interest to LE anyway.) A simple assertion of the form "I recommend Danny the Dealer" is not a statement implicating the speaker in any illicit transaction which is prosecutable. You once said you were a law student...unless I'm misremembering. If so, how could you make such an elementary error? There are other ways to make the same "word spreads" endorsements, too. From a nym, in an article, etc. As to why someone like Declan might _want_ to help spread the word, there are multiple reasons: to encourage more such reputable dealers, to discourage bad dealers, as a kind of "attaboy" for the good dealings, and so on. Isn't this all pretty obvious? --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 04:07 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
And your possible motive for spreading the word about his reputation, which ties you to an illicit transaction, is what exactly?
Bear
Anonymity is the shield; Human nature is the motivation. Any questions?
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
At 04:07 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
And your possible motive for spreading the word about his reputation, which ties you to an illicit transaction, is what exactly?
Bear
Anonymity is the shield; Human nature is the motivation.
Any questions?
More a statement. You're confusing pseudonymit and plausible deniability with anonymity. If the party were truly anonymous there would be no way to identify them to a third party in order to pass the 'reputation capital' along. There would have to be a 'persistent nym', not an anonymous one. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 09:12 PM 4/16/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
If the party were truly anonymous there would be no way to identify them to a third party in order to pass the 'reputation capital' along.
There would have to be a 'persistent nym', not an anonymous one.
Persistent, untraceable nym. Both. Untraceables without persistance are useful mostly for email. Persistent & untraceable, that's part of the Realization.
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
Persistent, untraceable nym.
Both.
Untraceables without persistance are useful mostly for email. Persistent & untraceable, that's part of the Realization.
Well, part of it, probably. The point being there are many 'kinds' of 'anonymity'. They are not(!) all equivalent. If there is no 'persistance' the requirement that it be 'untraceable' is moot, unless you plan on coming back (very bad idea to ever visit the same place twice, or stay in the same place more than 24 hours). ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 08:45 PM 4/17/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
Persistent, untraceable nym.
Both.
Untraceables without persistance are useful mostly for email. Persistent & untraceable, that's part of the Realization.
Well, part of it, probably. The point being there are many 'kinds' of 'anonymity'. They are not(!) all equivalent.
Yes that is one of the things you can actually learn from this group if your receiver can handle the S/N ratio.
If there is no 'persistance' the requirement that it be 'untraceable' is moot, unless you plan on coming back (very bad idea to ever visit the same place twice, or stay in the same place more than 24 hours).
If you have a non-persistant but traceable nym, what's the point? Suppose you use a one-time email account to threaten the president, but the message is traceable to your carcass (e.g., the internet cafe had surveillance cameras). You may as well use your Meat Name; its gonna hit the papers anyway. On the other hand, a non-persistant and untraceable nym is good for threatening the president, but not useful for reputation building. A persistant but untraceable nym is good for commerce. All are possible. All are useful. Ergo, all will come about, whether you like it or not.
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
If you have a non-persistant but traceable nym, what's the point?
Of what point is a new born baby? You have to let it grow up. That depends on the particular context, in addition there is no requirement that I am aware of that says that all 'modes' of anonymity are useful. Only that they have a demonstrable difference from other 'modes'. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 06:09:38PM -0700, David Honig wrote:
Untraceables without persistance are useful mostly for email. Persistent & untraceable, that's part of the Realization.
Is that part of the Singularity? :) -Declan
At 10:09 PM 4/17/01 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Tue, Apr 17, 2001 at 06:09:38PM -0700, David Honig wrote:
Untraceables without persistance are useful mostly for email. Persistent & untraceable, that's part of the Realization.
Is that part of the Singularity? :)
The one in 2038, maybe.
Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
And your possible motive for spreading the word about his reputation, which ties you to an illicit transaction, is what exactly?
Wouldn't your own reputation be blinded by a nym anyway? -- ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------
On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Sunder wrote:
Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
And your possible motive for spreading the word about his reputation, which ties you to an illicit transaction, is what exactly?
Wouldn't your own reputation be blinded by a nym anyway?
Nyms are not as hard as most of you seem to assume. Each instance of a nym's use is more data for traffic analysis, and writing styles contain "signature" usages that can identify particular writers with a high degree of probability. If the probability is ever deemed high enough that a search warrant can issue, and your nym is involved in all kinds of illicit deals which are verifiable through the reputation system, then you have a problem because the lions are likely to come take your favorite toys away, and may even put you through a "trial" like the one that just happened to Mr. Bell. Hmm. A worthwhile hack; I should develop a program that uses the known techniques of identifying a writer by his/her style, and then create "styles" to conform to for each nym. If I can fool my program, then there's at least a prayer of fooling other people's. Bear
Ray Dillinger wrote:
Wouldn't your own reputation be blinded by a nym anyway?
Nyms are not as hard as most of you seem to assume. Each instance of a nym's use is more data for traffic analysis, and writing styles contain "signature" usages that can identify particular writers with a high degree of probability.
Ah, yes, traffic analysis, context analysis. Good stuff. There are ways around this problem. Solving the traffic analysis involves having a lot of mixmasters out there. Sad that there aren't more.
If the probability is ever deemed high enough that a search warrant can issue, and your nym is involved in all kinds of illicit deals which are verifiable through the reputation system, then you have a problem because the lions are likely to come take your favorite toys away, and may even put you through a "trial" like the one that just happened to Mr. Bell.
It also depends on how circumstantial versus how hard said evidence is. Sure, if you're reccomending your favorite dope dealer to someone else, it doesn't matter how they found out that you are the infamous B34r "McVeigh" Phr3@k4z01d, they can get you on a possession rap.
Hmm. A worthwhile hack; I should develop a program that uses the known techniques of identifying a writer by his/her style, and then create "styles" to conform to for each nym. If I can fool my program, then there's at least a prayer of fooling other people's.
Been there, done that. See Medusa's Tentacles from ye ol'e Detweiler wars: http://www.es.embnet.org/Services/ftp/misc/Crypt/code/medusa1b.zip (Just got it back from google. Search for other medusa1b.zip if that link is 404.) Feel free to take my code and update it to something more useful than the brainfart that it was. :) -- ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ <--*-->:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------
(Re: CDR RE: snipped from headers.....) On Wed, 18 Apr 2001, Sunder wrote:
Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Declan McCullagh wrote:
And your possible motive for spreading the word about his reputation, which ties you to an illicit transaction, is what exactly?
Wouldn't your own reputation be blinded by a nym anyway?
Give me a few dozen writing samples from each of a hundred known people, and another writing sample a hundred words long from one of them under a pseudonym, and I can tell you to a 90% probability which of the hundred known people wrote it. If some persistent pseudonym has a record with hundreds or thousands of illicit transactions, the lions are going to be crawling cyberspace for *any* writing that matches its style closely enough to have been written by the same person. They'll get a short list. Then they'll start eliminating possibilities and when they're down to three or four they'll start getting wiretap orders. With the wiretap order, they can run a sting or a man-in-the-middle attack so they've got one solid charge. That will net them an arrest warrant if it works. But whether this works or not, they can still get a search warrant after they give it a shot. If the machine is not theft-secure (and face it, almost no machines are), the arrest warrant issues anyway and the owner of the pseudonym winds up in jail. And the lions didn't have to do any particularly clever cryptanalysis to get there. All they had to do was run a spreadsheet counting grammar, word choice, sentence length, and a few other parameters until they found a match. Bear
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Give me a few dozen writing samples from each of a hundred known people, and another writing sample a hundred words long from one of them under a pseudonym, and I can tell you to a 90% probability which of the hundred known people wrote it.
Not if all 100 know their writing will be statistically analyzed. A simple double translation through a babblefish will totaly screw your stats. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Choate said:
A simple double translation through a babblefish will totaly screw your stats.
Not to mention your meaning: What! Lost your mittens, You naughty kittens, Then you shall have no pie. Meow, meow, Then you shall have no pie. *bablefish* -> Italian and back That what! It has lost yours mittens, you kittens naughty, then you will not eat cake. Meow, the meow, then you will not eat cake. I think this is a dumb idea. (Again, I mentioned I thought it was BS.) Your word choice will still be consistent through the translator. Although if you threw in stylistic randomness...I dunno. Big damn difference between pie and cake. *bablefish* -> to Spanish and back. Screwy. Even typos. I think that this is a dumb idea (once again I mentioned I I thought that it was BS.) Its option of the word still will be constant through the translator. Although if you sent in dunno stylistic of the randomness... I. Great damn difference between empanada and the cake. ~Aimee
On Thu, 19 Apr 2001, Aimee Farr wrote:
Choate said:
A simple double translation through a babblefish will totaly screw your stats.
Not to mention your meaning:
Only if you're sloppy enough not to redo it if you think it's not going to be clear. Nobody says you get one shot. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 10:07 PM 4/19/01 -0500, Aimee Farr wrote:
I think this is a dumb idea. (Again, I mentioned I thought it was BS.) Your word choice will still be consistent through the translator. Although if you threw in stylistic randomness...I dunno. Big damn difference between pie and cake.
The idea is that the Babelfish abstracts a meaning and then projects it back into some language. It may well be the case that <given service> is too mechanical to be of use for stylistic-anonymization. And as I just posted, you can't use a public server.
*bablefish* -> to Spanish and back. Screwy. Even typos.
I think that this is a dumb idea (once again I mentioned I I thought that it was BS.) Its option of the word still will be constant through the translator. Although if you sent in dunno stylistic of the randomness... I. Great damn difference between empanada and the cake.
~Aimee
Perhaps the next generation of anonymizing tools will perform linguistic abstraction in a way more sympathetic to those nuances. 'Gisting' is the formal term. But you knew that.
This is well-trod ground. I'll have to be brief here. At 2:06 PM -0700 4/15/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
Widespread black markets, for drugs, betting, etc., suggest otherwise.
There are many markets out there which do not rely on the official court system to enforce contracts for.
This is true, but look at the mechanisms for enforcing contracts that they *do* use. Most of them are not compatible with anonymity, and only a few are compatible with pseudonymity.
Mafia Bosses don't buy information from someone when they don't know where that someone lives. It's the exact same enforceability of contracts problem that other parts of society uses lawyers to deal with. Legbreakers or cops, basically they have the same job with regard to contract enforcement. There has to be a hook where someone who does a ripoff can be punished, or else there is no deal.
You are talking about what game theorists call "defection," or what drug dealers would call "burning." Cheating, deception, etc. No one can deny that animals, humans, and other agents use deception, hiding, coloration, etc. Nothing is perfect, not even in the "law-regulated economy" some folks seem to think is the only economy which can function. How non-law-regulated (black) markets work, and how they deal with deception and cheating, is a huge topic. (I recently suggested to David Friedman that he consider taking on this topic for a major book.) But the "paving stone," or touch stone, I want to bring up is this: the role of third party escrow agents. Use Google or a similar search engine and search on "cyphernomicon escrow". The section on use of escrow agents will come up immediately. One such URL is http://calvo.teleco.ulpgc.es/cyphernomicon/chapter16/16.24.html (I have written dozens of articles on this over the years, answering the same tired old question that Ray Dillinger asks.) When you have read this, and thought about the issue, we can discuss things further. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
But the "paving stone," or touch stone, I want to bring up is this: the role of third party escrow agents.
Escrow is practically useless unless Esther can verify that both parties have kept to their promise. If the data Esther keeps is encrypted, this will not, barring ZKPs, be possible. In an anonymous economy, having the data in a usable form will give Esther an incentive to use up the tradeable goods escrowed by Bob. Anonymity also gives her a real possibility to do that, unlike with traditional escrow. Of course there are a host of nasty complications, like how different sorts of tradeable items might be protected from this sort of conduct (e.g. anonymous cash probably could be protected from Esther, while sensitive corporate memos being sold to a competitor perhaps couldn't), and the possibility of linking Esther to the damage done to Bob in different kinds of transactions. Nevertheless, I think this is a valid objection. Bonds are a different thing, though. Offhand, the only problem I have with them is the protocols one would use to ensure that the bond is never collected unfairly. If the information passed is such that its value cannot be ascertained without human intervention, one would need an arbitrator, perhaps even one with the resources and knowledge of the contracting parties (I'm thinking sale of information whose value depends on factors not known to the public). But on the other hand, this might well be a circumstance rare enough to warrant little attention. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
-- At 02:48 PM 4/15/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:
How non-law-regulated (black) markets work, and how they deal with deception and cheating, is a huge topic. (I recently suggested to David Friedman that he consider taking on this topic for a major book.)
David Friedman lacks empirical data. I have some empirical data. My empirical data is as follows: Information about people's reputations tends to be poor and unreliable, since one cannot report satisfactory or unsatisfactory performance widely. The worst people tend to be discovered and excluded, however because one cannot exercise as much choice about those one does business with as one would prefer, one needs the temperament, physical size, and business associations that enables one to make credible threats of breaking people's arms and legs. Among the better class of people, illegal entrepreneurs who went to the right schools and refrain from taking opiate drugs, one relies overwhelmingly on reputation and character. However among the worse class of people, fly-by-night illegal entrepreneurs, and people who take opiate drugs, one relies heavily on the threat of physical harm. Illegal entrepreneurs tend to become snobs. It is the only practical way to operate an illegal business. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Q/RIlFG+UJ6pqGUy3X9AETW273ySxFK5z+AUeSE0 4lhnDjbUKw95Q08QUiuCur6+KdzxsKpS/tBzQQW0L ----------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
Ray & Tim, easy to see who said what: Bear:
As presented, I think she's probably right. Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Widespread black markets, for drugs, betting, etc., suggest otherwise.
There are many markets out there which do not rely on the official court system to enforce contracts for.
Again, I'm trying to cut out all the lawyers, contracts and so forth, there are other ways to regulate, but it's all variables: a combination of nym alternative dispute resolution, escrow concepts (money, and ID) and reputational systems. Participants can choose disclosed, an agency-infomediary or a "zeroknowledge" participation level, and define who they are comfortable dealing with... just what you guys talk about, and just like real life.
When you talk about a one-time transaction, it pretty much has to involve something whose value can be ascertained ON THE SPOT. otherwise, there is either a continuing relationship that can't be unilaterally broken (ie, they know where you live) or there is no deal. The value of information (other than entertainment value) is not generally ascertainable on the spot, because if you don't have at least some of the information, you can't check something that claims to be the information. Also, you often have to do a couple days work figuring out information formats and problems before you can even do your checking against it, particularly with financial data.
Exactly, and this is where I run into trouble. However, as long as SOMEBODY is accountable, the goat of the wrongdoer isn't always required for the transacting party. I am more concerned about policing the community, but I do think it's possible outside of traditional legal and transactional frameworks, reverting back, as Tim made reference to (as I have I, damnit) the old polycentric merchant society frameworks.
Real business involves lasting relationships. You don't want to be owed money, or merchandise either, by someone who can just shed the pseudonym and disappear.
And "reputation capital" that would counteract that point to some extent depends on maintaining a consistent traceable pseudonym as someone who does something illegal, for decades, without getting linked to it.
As with Aimee, you haven't thought outside the box.
You being a lawyer larvae, and Aimee being an official lawyer, is this something that _comes_ from being a lawyer, or is this something that causes a person to give up doing something real, like programming or designing chips, to _become_ a lawyer?
Tim, I don't know why you're calling me "Lawyer larvae". I'm not in Law school, nor have I ever been.
What Aimee and I both seem to be pointing out here is that while it is *possible* for people to do business anonymously/pseudonymously, a whole new economy would have to grow up that way in order for it to become routine. You are really and truly talking about building from scratch with effectively no interface to the way business is currently done. I can respect that, but keep in mind that all the peripheral mechanisms of the way business is currently done will be trying to stomp the "aberration" out.
Eh, I was just trying to envision a live pitch opportunity. An intelligence development contract seemed in the ballpark for serious bank, and privatization changes might be breeding some opportunity. Clearly, an open source information mercantile system is already making the intelligence agenda. I find it "not unthinkable" that Tim's agora will first see the light of day as part of a legitimate intelligence endeavor. ~Aimee
At 02:06 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
regard to contract enforcement. There has to be a hook where someone who does a ripoff can be punished, or else there is no deal.
In infospace, there is only reputation, not meat and bones, that can be damaged.
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
At 02:06 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
regard to contract enforcement. There has to be a hook where someone who does a ripoff can be punished, or else there is no deal.
In infospace, there is only reputation, not meat and bones, that can be damaged.
Tell that to the insulin pump or the aircraft auto-pilot... What a naive view of 'bits'. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 08:59 PM 4/16/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
At 02:06 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
regard to contract enforcement. There has to be a hook where someone who does a ripoff can be punished, or else there is no deal.
In infospace, there is only reputation, not meat and bones, that can be damaged.
Tell that to the insulin pump or the aircraft auto-pilot...
What a naive view of 'bits'.
We're not talking about life-critical apps.
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
At 08:59 PM 4/16/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
At 02:06 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
regard to contract enforcement. There has to be a hook where someone who does a ripoff can be punished, or else there is no deal.
In infospace, there is only reputation, not meat and bones, that can be damaged.
Tell that to the insulin pump or the aircraft auto-pilot...
What a naive view of 'bits'.
We're not talking about life-critical apps.
And why not, they certainly aren't excluded by your earlier commentary above. Is your contention that crypto-anarchy only works in non-life-critical apps? Somehow I doubt that. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
-- At 02:06 PM 4/15/2001 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Mafia Bosses don't buy information from someone when they don't know where that someone lives. It's the exact same enforceability of contracts problem that other parts of society uses lawyers to deal with. Legbreakers or cops, basically they have the same job with regard to contract enforcement. There has to be a hook where someone who does a ripoff can be punished, or else there is no deal.
Untrue. Most people operating an illegal busines much prefer to have arrangements that do not require the threat of breaking people's arms and legs. An old school tie much reduces the cost of doing business. You do not want to know where someone lives, you want to know if he can be trusted. Indeed, if you know where someone lives, he probably knows where you live. Far better if both know the other can be trusted, and neither knows where the other lives. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 88pjABj2EWfGPnrfWn8iaMIb+s7svtPTNRQxo8m6 4NqKVPIlwFuXqTAR6wLecxQhkb0GnZI/B/bgxX3Id ----------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
-- At 02:06 PM 4/15/2001 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
This is true, but look at the mechanisms for enforcing contracts that they *do* use. Most of them are not compatible with anonymity, and only a few are compatible with pseudonymity.
A common mechanism that they do use in Australia is an old school tie. Such a mechanism can be readily adapted to anonymity. For example one could have anonymous credentials proving that this person is a member of a certain group, credentials that the group can use to identify him as a specific member of the group, but which outsiders cannot use to determine which specific member of the group he is. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG 47YeAg9+TArpQDzL5n7RWzi2JSPVpZzn0gZb7A85 4mjN0t0N0+mSUv3M166tnHiT/IUk9mF3TfmBWJ+s8 ----------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
Tim; One thing to consider is the role of "credit histories", or virtually any other identity-linked information, in a milieu where the people have access to the necessary techniques and programs to do those deals. You sell Alice a credit history on Bob; Bob takes a new identity; Alice is back to square one. Why would Alice buy credit histories? For that matter, why would anyone loan money in the first place? What credit histories could there possibly be? Bear
On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 02:11:56PM -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
You sell Alice a credit history on Bob; Bob takes a new identity; Alice is back to square one. Why would Alice buy credit histories?
Not everyone will choose to be lost in the Net. So the solution is simple: I sell Alice a new report on Bob's new identity, after doing the appropriate research and employing the relevant investigators. All credit is a gamble. If I know a person's meatspace identity and ties with religious/social/family groups, I'm far more likely to lend them money then if they're using a throwaway hushmail account. If Bob is doing the latter, he won't get credit in the first place. If he's using a known meatspace identity, I can do the research and likely succeed. -Declan
At 5:29 PM -0400 4/15/01, Declan McCullagh wrote:
On Sun, Apr 15, 2001 at 02:11:56PM -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
You sell Alice a credit history on Bob; Bob takes a new identity; Alice is back to square one. Why would Alice buy credit histories?
Not everyone will choose to be lost in the Net.
So the solution is simple: I sell Alice a new report on Bob's new identity, after doing the appropriate research and employing the relevant investigators.
All credit is a gamble. If I know a person's meatspace identity and ties with religious/social/family groups, I'm far more likely to lend them money then if they're using a throwaway hushmail account.
If Bob is doing the latter, he won't get credit in the first place. If he's using a known meatspace identity, I can do the research and likely succeed.
And to make sure that Ray Dillinger is not confused, let me point out that my "credit rating data haven" is not necessarily for cyberspace nyms. Rather, it's for the meatspace world of credit evaluation. The point of moving it outside a jurisdiction like the U.S., and perhaps beyond _any_ physical jurisdiction, is because meatspace credit data bases and reporting services are heavily regulated. (Also a good reason why seller-untraceability is as important as buyer-untraceability.) --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 02:53 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:
And to make sure that Ray Dillinger is not confused, let me point out that my "credit rating data haven" is not necessarily for cyberspace nyms. Rather, it's for the meatspace world of credit evaluation.
"Credit" has many dimensions (or application). The NYT has more journalistic "credit" than Drudge. Don Trump has more financial "credit" than readers of this list :-) Various members of this list have more list "credit" when it comes to e.g., physical explanations than others. Since corporations are virtual citizens, and citizens may participate in a multitude virtual corporations, there's a lot of behavior to keep track of. Social primates are uniquely equipt to monitor conformance with social contracts. The automation of reputation is so natural its not funny.
-- At 05:29 PM 4/15/2001 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
If I know a person's meatspace identity and ties with religious/social/family groups, I'm far more likely to lend them money then if they're using a throwaway hushmail account.
If Bob is doing the latter, he won't get credit in the first place. If he's using a known meatspace identity, I can do the research and likely succeed.
But people on EBay do use nyms. Naturally they prefer to do business with a nym that has a long history of honestly completing deals on EBay. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG bozoFF8pZ3WC8eVjUTzYPNmML3V5P4XS5IwNl8ce 4iisrxL8cQKwFyCFBpvG7wV86Wzmx6LENVNNQIW/b ----------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
At 2:11 PM -0700 4/15/01, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Tim;
One thing to consider is the role of "credit histories", or virtually any other identity-linked information, in a milieu where the people have access to the necessary techniques and programs to do those deals.
You sell Alice a credit history on Bob; Bob takes a new identity; Alice is back to square one. Why would Alice buy credit histories?
For that matter, why would anyone loan money in the first place? What credit histories could there possibly be?
As Declan pointed out in his follow-up, you assume nyms will be adopted and abandoned freely. Some will, some won't. "A Melon" doesn't have much reputation capital, but "Pr0duct Cypher" does. The former will vanish and reappear like quantum foam, the latter will not. This is not a zero friction system. In any case, "credit histories" are nothing more than assertions. Some assertions are true, some are false, some are of little value, some are of great value. Historically, some assertions about credit history are valuable to others. The issue of Alice and Bob being pseudonymous is close to be orhtogonal to this point. In any case, caveat emptor works pretty well. If such assertions are of zero value, as you imply, then this is what the market will show. If not... --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 02:11 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Tim;
One thing to consider is the role of "credit histories", or virtually any other identity-linked information, in a milieu where the people have access to the necessary techniques and programs to do those deals.
You sell Alice a credit history on Bob; Bob takes a new identity; Alice is back to square one. Why would Alice buy credit histories?
Because it decreases her risk when lending, ie, increases her efficiency. Evolution is about efficiency.
For that matter, why would anyone loan money in the first place? What credit histories could there possibly be?
Bear
Because the service of Carol the CreditHistoryLibrarian is much cheaper than making loans without that service, both Carol and the lenders can exist. Lenders don't lend to folks without CreditHistory. Any train of thought that concludes that bankers can't exist is wrong somewhere.
-- At 02:11 PM 4/15/2001 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Tim;
One thing to consider is the role of "credit histories", or virtually any other identity-linked information, in a milieu where the people have access to the necessary techniques and programs to do those deals.
You sell Alice a credit history on Bob; Bob takes a new identity; Alice is back to square one. Why would Alice buy credit histories?
By this argument, obviously the reputational mechanism used by EBay cannot work, since it is based on freely available pseudonyms, not true names. Yet EBay is the only internet business that has been continually and heavily profitable, and its prime asset is its reputational database. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG m7GXB73nK8M1WjN8TNNa5/4yVWul271Iv4GgNzeH 46f77cWW4rMfcYkTR7iJXl63DB2kiO1QqgqD9Gdc1 ----------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Tim May wrote:
As presented, I think she's probably right. Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Widespread black markets, for drugs, betting, etc., suggest otherwise.
That doesn't really kill the argumetn. The key word is enforceable. Black markets do it directly by guns, the society at large needs the legal system to mediate. The lack of legal enforceability *is* a problem. OTOH, one could imagine reputations being built without them being linked to a fixed pseudonym. Whether the necessary crypto exists, or if the resulting web of trust can be made strong enough, I have no idea. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
At 12:36 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:
There are many markets out there which do not rely on the official court system to enforce contracts for.
The diamond-trading jews of New York use reputation (ostracism from the community, centrally enforced by a council that rules their voluntary association) to handle 'arbitration'. Jews also use a non-governmental USDA to keep their food clean. FWIW
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
The diamond-trading jews of New York use reputation (ostracism from the community, centrally enforced by a council that rules their voluntary association) to handle 'arbitration'.
They're also responsible to the same law and license that every other diamond trader in NY is responsible to. This isn't a 'market' in the economic sense, it's an extension of their religion (clearly a non-economic aspect to their culture).
Jews also use a non-governmental USDA to keep their food clean.
Which again isn't really a 'market' per se since there isn't a statistical issue here. ALL Jews, as opposed to some percentage of same, technicaly require their food to be kosher. They are particular mechanisms for the protection of their culture not an 'economic market' (though both have economic aspects). They don't do it to protect their income. They do it because they believe it's the 'right' thing to do, they are answering to a higher calling. ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
I was listening to a radio program on NPR (The cypherpunks favorite statist medium :) ). They were discussing the problems with the certification of kosher food. Evidently there are many different organizations with differing ideas on what it takes to be kosher. They interviewed one restaurant owner who follows kosher practices and has been certified by a rabbi. However, the local kosher certification organization says he isn't because he doesn't have a full time rabbi on staff in the kitchen (who just happens to HAVE to be from their organization). So most orthodox Jews won't eat there. Kind of sounds like a "protection racket" to me. Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Choate" <ravage@ssz.com> To: <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com> Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 8:57 PM Subject: CDR: RE: Making the Agora Vanish | OSINT distributed haven (Intellagora)
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
The diamond-trading jews of New York use reputation (ostracism from the community, centrally enforced by a council that rules their
voluntary
association) to handle 'arbitration'.
They're also responsible to the same law and license that every other diamond trader in NY is responsible to. This isn't a 'market' in the economic sense, it's an extension of their religion (clearly a non-economic aspect to their culture).
Jews also use a non-governmental USDA to keep their food clean.
Which again isn't really a 'market' per se since there isn't a statistical issue here. ALL Jews, as opposed to some percentage of same, technicaly require their food to be kosher.
They are particular mechanisms for the protection of their culture not an 'economic market' (though both have economic aspects). They don't do it to protect their income. They do it because they believe it's the 'right' thing to do, they are answering to a higher calling.
____________________________________________________________________
The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone.
James Madison
The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Neil Johnson wrote:
I was listening to a radio program on NPR (The cypherpunks favorite statist medium :) ).
They were discussing the problems with the certification of kosher food.
Evidently there are many different organizations with differing ideas on what it takes to be kosher.
They interviewed one restaurant owner who follows kosher practices and has been certified by a rabbi.
However, the local kosher certification organization says he isn't because he doesn't have a full time rabbi on staff in the kitchen (who just happens to HAVE to be from their organization). So most orthodox Jews won't eat there.
Kind of sounds like a "protection racket" to me.
And they admit it freely, the 'protection racket of the soul'. This is after all one of the primary facets of their lives. It's also very non-economic in character. It also occured to me a few minutes ago while I was out on an errand that it's pretty funny that crypto-anarchist are using 'heavily regulated markets' as examples of the strength of 'free market' and 'reputation capital' (being devout is related to 'reputation'?). ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Protection racket? Nah. More like "I won't buy a lamp that's not UL-certified" or "I won't buy a novel that Oprah doesn't recommend." Kosher rating systems are a wonderful example of private reputation systems. There are hundreds of rating agencies; they seem to generally coexist -- folks who are sufficiently interested can rely on whichever they choose, or none at all. -Declan On Mon, Apr 16, 2001 at 09:34:43PM -0500, Neil Johnson wrote:
I was listening to a radio program on NPR (The cypherpunks favorite statist medium :) ).
They were discussing the problems with the certification of kosher food.
Evidently there are many different organizations with differing ideas on what it takes to be kosher.
They interviewed one restaurant owner who follows kosher practices and has been certified by a rabbi.
However, the local kosher certification organization says he isn't because he doesn't have a full time rabbi on staff in the kitchen (who just happens to HAVE to be from their organization). So most orthodox Jews won't eat there.
Kind of sounds like a "protection racket" to me.
Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Choate" <ravage@ssz.com> To: <cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com> Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 8:57 PM Subject: RE: Making the Agora Vanish | OSINT distributed haven (Intellagora)
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
The diamond-trading jews of New York use reputation (ostracism from the community, centrally enforced by a council that rules their
voluntary
association) to handle 'arbitration'.
They're also responsible to the same law and license that every other diamond trader in NY is responsible to. This isn't a 'market' in the economic sense, it's an extension of their religion (clearly a non-economic aspect to their culture).
Jews also use a non-governmental USDA to keep their food clean.
Which again isn't really a 'market' per se since there isn't a statistical issue here. ALL Jews, as opposed to some percentage of same, technicaly require their food to be kosher.
They are particular mechanisms for the protection of their culture not an 'economic market' (though both have economic aspects). They don't do it to protect their income. They do it because they believe it's the 'right' thing to do, they are answering to a higher calling.
____________________________________________________________________
The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone.
James Madison
The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 09:34 PM 4/16/01 -0500, Neil Johnson wrote:
However, the local kosher certification organization says he isn't because he doesn't have a full time rabbi on staff in the kitchen (who just happens to HAVE to be from their organization). So most orthodox Jews won't eat there.
Kind of sounds like a "protection racket" to me.
I never said it wasn't. Its besides the point. All profitable religions are mutually exclusive monopolies, anyway. The most profitable encourage breeding and proselytism. The best ref on kosher (and the moslem version) slaughter is http://www.grandin.com/ In Calif, 'organic' is a term enforced by a protection racket called California.
At 08:57 PM 4/16/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
The diamond-trading jews of New York use reputation (ostracism from the community, centrally enforced by a council that rules their voluntary association) to handle 'arbitration'.
They're also responsible to the same law and license that every other diamond trader in NY is responsible to. This isn't a 'market' in the economic sense, it's an extension of their religion (clearly a non-economic aspect to their culture).
You have it backwards. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with culture. The buddhists of nepal could have manage their section of the jade bead market the same way.
Jews also use a non-governmental USDA to keep their food clean.
Which again isn't really a 'market' per se since there isn't a statistical issue here. ALL Jews, as opposed to some percentage of same, technicaly require their food to be kosher.
I'm not going to discuss jewish law with a texan sitting shiva for a Ramone.
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
You have it backwards. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with culture. The buddhists of nepal could have manage their section of the jade bead market the same way.
For a devout Jew there is no difference between 'religion' and 'culture'. Got something to do with a Pharoah, and 40 years in a desert, some frogs from the sky...I just don't seem to remember... ____________________________________________________________________ The ultimate authority...resides in the people alone. James Madison The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
At 08:32 PM 4/17/01 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, David Honig wrote:
You have it backwards. It has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with culture. The buddhists of nepal could have manage their section of the jade bead market the same way.
For a devout Jew there is no difference between 'religion' and 'culture'.
I yield to Rabbi Choate Rabid Choate?
Got something to do with a Pharoah, and 40 years in a desert, some frogs from the sky...I just don't seem to remember...
Take a lesson from the Man, Jim: you just wanna be (needta be) sedated...
At 11:30 AM 4/15/2001 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
This is a common refrain - especially among people who are pushing, for cultural or economic reasons, the adoption of a PKI system - but I think it suffers considerably from being overgeneralized. Specifically, it's common to overemphasize the importance of the government-based legal system as a dispute resolution system, or as a righter of wrongs, especially private civil contract-based litigation where force multipliers like attorneys' fees awards, punitive damages, or widespread public scorn or embarrassment. Even in a case where nothing goes wrong - e.g., both parties are subject to personal jurisdiction in the same place, they agree on the laws to be applied and the court which should apply them, and they have a clear pre-existing agreement covering their relationship - litigation is slow and expensive. On TV, it looks like a dramatic clash between two lone samurai attorneys fighting for the honor of their principals. In the real world, it looks more like WW I trench warfare, with expensive, slow, vicious, impersonal fighting over feet and yards of muddy, uninteresting terrain that's not good for much once the fighting stops. One of the problems people have when they learn defensive shooting is that they expect criminal assailants to just fall down and die if they're shot once, because that's how it works in the movies. In real life, actual criminals have often been shot before - frequently several times - and lived without serious consequences, partly because they received prompt, skilled medical care, and partly because the people who shot them didn't select an effective combination of ammunition and firearm. Because of their experience with gunshot wounds, criminals no longer necessarily have a great fear of being shot, nor are they likely to respond to it as a life-threatening event. Consequently, a person defending themselves against people like that will need to use force sufficient to render them physically and medically incapable of attack - injuries which might otherwise have resulted in moral or emotional incapacitation are likely to be inadequate to end an attack. Turns out the same thing happens with people and companies who use lawsuits instead of guns - they learn that it's not the end of the world if you get sued, and that suing someone (especially if they're an experienced defendant) isn't necessarily going to make them play nicely immediately. We talk about people making decisions based on the abstract notion of "the law" or "the courts" - but it's more useful to break that down further into decisions based upon "the carrot" and "the stick", or "greed" and "fear" .. the labels aren't important, so much as is thinking about those two flavors of human motivation. The "legally enforceable contract" notion is meant to invoke fear of a powerful and unavoidable stick - ideally striking fear (and good behavior) into the heart of a potential bad actor. As things turn out, sophisticated actors - be they businesspersons, criminals, diplomats, or whomever - come to understand that the law's force as a stick is not so powerful and unlimited as it's frequently portrayed. Does the failure of "the stick" doom us to lives of fear and hunger? No. Not at all - in fact, many of the people who enjoy themselves the most seem to be people who have learned to act on "carrot" motives, and to structure their negotiations and contracts with others so that they are operating not based upon fear, but upon mutual advancement and cooperation?
And "reputation capital" that would counteract that point to some extent depends on maintaining a consistent traceable pseudonym as someone who does something illegal, for decades, without getting linked to it.
No - it depends on maintaining a consistent identity, whose trades with its counterparties are considered by those counterparties to be both predictable and beneficial. As Tim May writes in a message which arrived while I was composing this one, there are plenty of examples of reputations as the basis for business deals now - and business deals which occur despite the lack of reputation systems. Cross-jurisdictional trade is one - really, it's just an example of the general class of disputes where the cost of resolving the dispute exceeds the value in dispute. There's a vast amount of commerce which goes on - certainly the majority in terms of number of transactions, likely the majority in terms of transaction dollar value, as well - where the cost to the participants to adjudicate a dispute regarding the transaction is greater than the value of the underlying goods, but is perceived as smaller than the cost to either party of ending their relationship. Easy examples of transactions without legal enforcement or reputation are street-level illegal transactions - e.g., purchases of drugs, sex, or forbidden information. At least initially, neither buyer nor seller knows if their counterparty is trustworthy - but these transactions take place, because both participants think that the value they get from the exchange is valuable .. in fact, more valuable than the risk that their counterparty is going to swindle them, or turn out to be an undercover cop. Even higher-level or repeat transactions, where participants have some level of experience with one another, present each with an opportunity to injure the other while denying the other access to traditional legal means of redressing that wrong. More examples about in the import-export arena - there are a number of private transaction patterns which have evolved to minimize risk and misunderstanding, but participants in international trade understand that there's some risk that they'll spend money to purchase unusable/unsalable product, or that they'll manufacture or reserve a specific quantity of goods for a buyer who may never appear .. and people doing business in those lines find that, most of the time, most people would rather conclude a deal well in hopes of gaining further business, either from that customer or via referrals. It is true that there is a vast amount of almost-demand on the parts of risk-averse people who don't want to act for fear of being wrong - but there are a lot of people who have figured out how to get things done without depending on "the stick" that is the law, and are doing so already. It is the latter group of people whose needs must be met for a transjurisdictional commerce system to be successful - the former group can come along when they're ready, or not at all. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "Organized crime is the price we pay for organization." -- Raymond Chandler
Bear said:
Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Actually, I'm past this. I don't need it. My problem is the value of the information within an information mercantile system - which involves policing the polycentric merchant community. Otherwise, such a system would become subject to "information policymaking, information peacekeeping / diplomacy - massive misinformation." Just basic abuse considerations, but with extreme ramifications in the context of the "Intel agora" hypothetical I posed. (I'm just playing around with your concepts.... unless I envision an complex contextual framework, I can't envision the applications and the obstacles.) ~Aimee
At 05:24 PM 4/15/01 -0500, Aimee Farr wrote:
Bear said:
Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Actually, I'm past this. I don't need it.
My problem is the value of the information within an information mercantile system - which involves policing the polycentric merchant community. Otherwise, such a system would become subject to "information policymaking, information peacekeeping / diplomacy - massive misinformation." Just basic abuse considerations, but with extreme ramifications in the context of the "Intel agora" hypothetical I posed.
You've identified one of several attacks on a distributed reputation system. The next step is to identify solutions to these problems. Then iterate, until you're proposing really hard attacks on the part of your adversary. At which point you've learned something. Remembering that disinfo, psyops, nym-unmasking, and other forms of social engineering are available options. If you can tie the meat to the T-shaped crucifix and inject what you want, you win. That's the game. But you knew that. If you wish to claim that enforcable contracts require meatspace identity, claim that, and listen to the discussion.
(I'm just playing around with your concepts.... unless I envision an complex contextual framework, I can't envision the applications and the obstacles.)
~Aimee
Don't play with us unless you're sincere. "Like sodium and water", dh
David Honig said:
Bear said:
Nobody in conventional business is going to want to do a deal with someone when they can't create a legally enforceable contract.
Actually, I'm past this. I don't need it.
My problem is the value of the information within an information mercantile system - which involves policing the polycentric merchant community. Otherwise, such a system would become subject to "information
At 05:24 PM 4/15/01 -0500, Aimee Farr wrote: policymaking,
information peacekeeping / diplomacy - massive misinformation." Just basic abuse considerations, but with extreme ramifications in the context of the "Intel agora" hypothetical I posed.
You've identified one of several attacks on a distributed reputation system. The next step is to identify solutions to these problems. Then iterate, until you're proposing really hard attacks on the part of your adversary. At which point you've learned something.
Remembering that disinfo, psyops, nym-unmasking, and other forms of social engineering are available options. If you can tie the meat to the T-shaped crucifix and inject what you want, you win.
That's the game. But you knew that.
Hm.
If you wish to claim that enforcable contracts require meatspace identity, claim that, and listen to the discussion.
No, I don't claim that meatspace identity is necessary, and I have read some "smart contract" theory. (I was dealing with the diplomatic and licensure peculiarities of my hypothetical, and agency theory, but that is a discussion for elsewhere.) Nevertheless,.... my hypothetical principals say that reputational system accountability and escrow concepts alone are highly inadequate in the proposed transactional environment. Because of the unique injuries which could result, in certain circumstances any adequate remedy necessarily involves unmasking the "bad infomerchant." Additionally, within this "unique" transactional environment, participants must know that should circumstances warrant, there is accountability beyond the reputational system. In regard to your Rabbi polycentric governance, I guess you could allow for unmasking by the use of an anonymous (possibly elected by lot) tribunal, allowing for the extreme situation where a participating info merchant could be unmasked. Of course, identity could not be knowable/vulnerable to discovery at any other time, or in any other circumstance. Nevermind how you would do it, what do you call it? (I realize most of you would call it stupid.) Identity escrow?
Don't play with us unless you're sincere.
Ok.
"Like sodium and water",
C-4. ~Aimee
At 09:24 PM 4/17/01 -0500, Aimee Farr wrote:
No, I don't claim that meatspace identity is necessary, and I have read some "smart contract" theory. (I was dealing with the diplomatic and licensure peculiarities of my hypothetical, and agency theory, but that is a discussion for elsewhere.)
Nevertheless,.... my hypothetical principals say that reputational system accountability and escrow concepts alone are highly inadequate in the proposed transactional environment.
"Implementation detail" Because of the unique injuries which
could result, in certain circumstances any adequate remedy necessarily involves unmasking the "bad infomerchant." Additionally, within this "unique" transactional environment, participants must know that should circumstances warrant, there is accountability beyond the reputational system.
In regard to your Rabbi polycentric governance, I guess you could allow for
Reputational librarians have themselves reputations. You trust the UL, you trust your <food-inspedtor>, right? Maybe you trust your particular brand of <food-inspector> and not the slight variant that your neighbor subscribes to. Your choice.
C-4.
Yes, we are normally benign, but we can be cutting if set off correctly.
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Greg Broiles wrote:
Even in a case where nothing goes wrong - e.g., both parties are subject to personal jurisdiction in the same place, they agree on the laws to be applied and the court which should apply them, and they have a clear pre-existing agreement covering their relationship - litigation is slow and expensive.
Which is one of the very reasons people hesitate to break contracts. It's just more advantageous the concentrate on mutual cooperation. Plus, anonymity even rids the parties of a possibility of confrontation, be it in court or on the street.
Does the failure of "the stick" doom us to lives of fear and hunger? No. Not at all - in fact, many of the people who enjoy themselves the most seem to be people who have learned to act on "carrot" motives, and to structure their negotiations and contracts with others so that they are operating not based upon fear, but upon mutual advancement and cooperation?
That's just the point. Anonymity might well create a new carrot leading people to deceive. End-game performance and all that.
Even higher-level or repeat transactions, where participants have some level of experience with one another, present each with an opportunity to injure the other while denying the other access to traditional legal means of redressing that wrong.
Yet one is left with more traditional means of redress, e.g. exposing the other party to the public or the law enforcement, and the internal bookkeeping mechanisms of the shadier markets themselves.
It is true that there is a vast amount of almost-demand on the parts of risk-averse people who don't want to act for fear of being wrong - but there are a lot of people who have figured out how to get things done without depending on "the stick" that is the law, and are doing so already. It is the latter group of people whose needs must be met for a transjurisdictional commerce system to be successful - the former group can come along when they're ready, or not at all.
However, if the former group is large enough, as one suspects, it may well repress any attempt to accommodate the needs of the latter. For instance, legislative attacks on any widespread anonymity infrastructure are pretty much a given when people, most of whom have precisely the kind of idealistic conception of the legal system you describe, realize that law can't touch an anonymous economy. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy@iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front
On Sat, 14 Apr 2001, Aimee Farr wrote:
That is an over-simplification, but yes. Intelligence is not headlines. To a large extent, "what's happening" is not analyzed correctly, because the intelligence community lacks sufficient expert analysis to cope with the dataload. This capability is in the private sector. These information flows, between the government sector and the private sector, are unmapped.
This is not true any more. The automated analysis of trawled data has advanced considerably beyond keyword searching at this point; there are programs out there now specifically looking for much more subtle and complicated things, which were formerly the domain of intelligence analyists, and they are actually pretty damn good. The simple keyword searchers and keyphrase searchers you hear about with echelon are only the front line; they pass their data back to much more sophisticated AI programs that analyze content, and synthesize information gleaned from massive numbers of such missives. Every time a situation like the Aum Shenrikyo (spelled?) subway attack happens, if the automated analysis suite didn't point it out first, human analysts come in and check out the dataflows that ran before it and around it, and create a new auto-analysis program. And then later, when another group that has anything like the same rhetoric and seems to be going through the same logistical steps pops up, the auto-analysis finds it without human help. I do not speak of specific known programs here; but my primary background is in AI and expert systems, and I can state unequivocally that intelligence analysis funded most of the research in the field for a very long time, and that programs such as I described above are well within the current state of the art. It is unusual for them to be deployed very widely in private industry because in private industry there is a real problem of retaining personnel with the proper expertise to work on them. They tend to be delicate in their operation -- you go to make a minor change in the data or the rules or the schemas and the performance of all other parts of the system degrades unless you are extremely careful, well-trained, and, let's face it, consistently just plain smarter than normal people. But when they are in tune, and their vocabulary tables are up-to-date, they are highly accurate. The problem of keeping these systems in tune is what drives most practical AI research today; the systems are effective, but brittle and unable to cope with subtle changes and variations very well. "Fuzzy" approaches like ANN's and Genetic Algorithms are attempts to get past this problem by making self-adjusting systems, but the volumes of data required to get self-adjustment working using such approaches are a problem; you'd have to have data from hundreds of Aum Shenrikyo type attacks before your GA or ANN really had a good chance of picking out what parts of the dataflow were relevant. So here's my speculation: human analysts are probably called in only after something takes the automatic tools by surprise, or when there is an administrative need for specific analysis that the automatic tools do not provide. Bear
Bear wrote: (Bear, read the entire before you reply...) I said:
That is an over-simplification, but yes. Intelligence is not headlines. To a large extent, "what's happening" is not analyzed correctly, because the intelligence community lacks sufficient expert analysis to cope with the dataload. This capability is in the private sector. These information flows, between the government sector and the private sector, are unmapped.
I want to paddle back to the kiddie pool, but I'll try to address you Bear, you are way over my little head....and so is this subject matter.
This is not true any more. The automated analysis of trawled data has advanced considerably beyond keyword searching at this point; there are programs out there now specifically looking for much more subtle and complicated things, which were formerly the domain of intelligence analysts, and they are actually pretty damn good. The simple keyword searchers and keyphrase searchers you hear about with echelon are only the front line; they pass their data back to much more sophisticated AI programs that analyze content, and synthesize information gleaned from massive numbers of such missives.
Yes, but I'm still speaking of information that is not online, not siphonable and locked in the overt experts in the private sector. It is not "current events" or "happenings" or "what's going on." It's analysis and intricacies that are critical for decision making. Not raw data or intelligence headlines. It's Mr. X and his theories on Y, that nobody knows about - Mr. X is hidden away in the private intelligence sector or some university closet. He's a specialist on ...uhm....South African Zulu Warrior Chieftains dress and culture. He can tell you that when Zulus get in war dress and bring knives and spears to your VIP meeting - it's a sign of respect, and not a violence indicator. (I just ripped off the basics of this hypo from this guy: http://www.icon.co.za/~agrudko/ representative of the private intelligence sector) Without knowing this information, your diplomatic protection force is going to rat-tat-tat them to pieces and lead to a "diplomatic snafu" of major proportions. They need this information NOW, because the helicopter with your diplomat just landed in a remote area for this roundtable in a big grass hut, and is facing 1,000 Zulu Warriors jumping up and down and chanting in full war dress, and the protection force of 5 is counting rounds in the back of their heads. Their protocol officer fainted and is receiving medical assistance in the 'copter. They place a call - decision time is 8-10 minutes. Somebody has got to finger and find Mr. X's knowledge. This information is NOT online, not siphonable, outside of regular intelligence channels - it's in Mr. X. Mr. X is one of five western people in the world that know about these things. Right then, Chief Zulu walks up and points his knife at your diplomat. Was that a threat? Your diplomat pees in his pants in front of 1,000 Zulu Warriors. Ramifications? BTW, your diplomat is also president of a transcontinental resource-extractive company with operations in ZA and is a top-level kidnapping and hostage risk - his capture or death would have diplomatic ramifications and would affect upcoming treaty negotiations related to the world diamond market. National events often turn on intimate knowledge of the strangest facts - these facts are known by people like Mr. X. You have 8 minutes to tell these guys what to do. You can mine you data, use your CIA-google, ask your AI, make some phone calls - and you are still whistling Dixie. So, this is what you do: You CIA analyst, fire up your SIGINT/ELINT fed AI and analysis programs, you call around.... What have those Zulu Warrior's been talking about lately? You find, to your dismay, little information....Zulus don't even use phones. So what do you do? You find pictures of "Zulu War Dress" and some basic protocol. Your internal experts agree. Your call: "Zulu War Dress = War = Aggression = take immediate evasive action." You go look at online and offline sources on this diplomat's diamond company. Sadly, you do not have an expert's competitive intelligence analysis which would have told you this man is about to become pivotal in the world diamond market, due to a secretly planned merger and acquisition with a gem company. Because of this one man, the entire gem and diamond markets are about to be revolutionized. *bloody gunfire exchange* Confused Zulu Warriors. The chief was just giving a sign of respect. Dead diplomat. Zulus go on the offensive. World diamond market: kaput. Mr. X happens to consult with PPS (private protection services) in ZA in Zulu territory. Private intelligence. Yet, for some reason, Mr. X doesn't appear on your screen. Why? Because you haven't developed information flows between yourself and the private intelligence sector. By and large, you don't talk to them. If you did, Mr. X's information would be in your system. "Mr. X - expert in Zulu chieftain diplomacy." Additionally, you didn't know about the diplomat's importance to the world diamond market, because you don't have access to ZA's leading private competitive intelligence agency profiles or their data bases (i.e. Grudko has a "WOLF" database, maybe he's willing to sell some of that info, this info is not in YOUR data banks.) I know that's "out there" and there are a thousand holes in this hypo, but it gets my basic point across. Somebody smarter than me would have to give a better hypo.
Every time a situation like the Aum Shenrikyo (spelled?) subway attack happens, if the automated analysis suite didn't point it out first, human analysts come in and check out the dataflows that ran before it and around it, and create a new auto-analysis program. And then later, when another group that has anything like the same rhetoric and seems to be going through the same logistical steps pops up, the auto-analysis finds it without human help.
Your data flows are amazing quiet as to this little grass hut situation...strangely, even though the future of the world diamond market hinges upon it....
I do not speak of specific known programs here; but my primary background is in AI and expert systems, and I can state unequivocally that intelligence analysis funded most of the research in the field for a very long time, and that programs such as I described above are well within the current state of the art. It is unusual for them to be deployed very widely in private industry because in private industry there is a real problem of retaining personnel with the proper expertise to work on them. They tend to be delicate in their operation -- you go to make a minor change in the data or the rules or the schemas and the performance of all other parts of the system degrades unless you are extremely careful, well-trained, and, let's face it, consistently just plain smarter than normal people. But when they are in tune, and their vocabulary tables are up-to-date, they are highly accurate.
Okay, so you add in Zulu chief knife-pointing, diplomatic pissing...= ANSWER?
The problem of keeping these systems in tune is what drives most practical AI research today; the systems are effective, but brittle and unable to cope with subtle changes and variations very well. "Fuzzy" approaches like ANN's and Genetic Algorithms are attempts to get past this problem by making self-adjusting systems, but the volumes of data required to get self-adjustment working using such approaches are a problem; you'd have to have data from hundreds of Aum Shenrikyo type attacks before your GA or ANN really had a good chance of picking out what parts of the dataflow were relevant.
So, this isn't what I'm talking about.
So here's my speculation: human analysts are probably called in only after something takes the automatic tools by surprise, or when there is an administrative need for specific analysis that the automatic tools do not provide.
Sometimes, a human, overt, expert analyst is the one thing you need, and can't find. Our intelligence agencies are long on tricked out data whatzits,... short on analysis and overt experts, because we haven't tapped and mapped private sector capabilities, data and information flows. Again, this information isn't headlines, it isn't online, it's in some Mr. X somewhere. Sometimes OBSCURE, definitely not secret, and it's not a topic of conversation ANYWHERE. This information is outside of your intelligence channels and in hidden in the private intelligence sector. But, what you say is still *very* relevant, because in my hypothetical "Intellagora" - offering private sector analytical info for sale, exchange, or free - you would need THIS capability. Being the genius that you clearly are... I encourage you to read some Steele thought, etc.: <http://www.oss.net/infoMerchantBank2.html> mull it over, and see what you can come up with...to give it "smarts." At this point, I need kiddies floats, but the subject is "big enough" to interest you. I think my hypo makes this sound more like a "phone directory of experts," or "data mining" and that's not what I'm after..... Again, I apologize for my flailing on the subject matter. Steele is better able to explain this purported opportunity for an OSINT community or "Intel agora," and the strategic benefits to intelligence agencies and the private intelligence community. I appreciate your taking the time to give me some insight, you raised some very interesting questions, amazingly on point, that I otherwise would have never thought of. ~Aimee
Read the hundreds of articles on these matters. Read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State," by Bruce Benson. Read David Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," and his other books. Read...
The point is, Aimee, _read the background material_.
Admittedly, I'm not Aimee. I was wondering if I could get a few helpful pointers towards the background material? Any assistance would be much appreciated.
--Tim May
--Ryan Sorensen
At 01:46 AM 4/15/2001 -0700, Ryan Sorensen wrote:
Read the hundreds of articles on these matters. Read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State," by Bruce Benson. Read David Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," and his other books. Read...
The point is, Aimee, _read the background material_.
Admittedly, I'm not Aimee. I was wondering if I could get a few helpful pointers towards the background material? Any assistance would be much appreciated.
You might also take a look at Robert Axelrod's _The Evolution of Cooperation_. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "Organized crime is the price we pay for organization." -- Raymond Chandler
At 1:21 PM -0700 4/15/01, Greg Broiles wrote:
At 01:46 AM 4/15/2001 -0700, Ryan Sorensen wrote:
Read the hundreds of articles on these matters. Read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State," by Bruce Benson. Read David Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," and his other books. Read...
The point is, Aimee, _read the background material_.
Admittedly, I'm not Aimee. I was wondering if I could get a few helpful pointers towards the background material? Any assistance would be much appreciated.
You might also take a look at Robert Axelrod's _The Evolution of Cooperation_.
And there are a dozen other books. The Well-Read Cypherpunk should know something about free market economics (not the Samuelson technical stuff taught in introductory econ classes in college), a litte bit about game theory and evolutionary game theory, some basic anarchist theory (left or right, provided one can see through the ideology), and should have an exposure to primitive cultures and how they trade for goods, how international commerce evolved, etc. It used to be that wide reading in "Scientific American" would supply a lot of the basics, stripped of any ideology. (Martin Gardner's "Mathematical Games" column was a staple...fortunately, his couple of dozen books are widely available.) The point of course is not to lay out a "logical proof" that crypto anarchy and related things are inevitable, but to establish a series of "paving stones" that allow the reader to stand and see how the gaps are likely to be filled in. (There are places where rigorous proof is useful, mainly in filling in these gaps. This view is in sharp contrast to the "pure logic" worldview demolished by Godel, Turing, Kleene, Chaitin, and others. Yes, such things have applicability even to epistemology.) Even fields dominated by ostensibly rigorous proof, like mathematics, fit this model. Before one can read a proof, a set of concepts has to be established. A few proofs, relating to geometry and number theory (no largest prime) are accesssible to young kids with little formal education, but even these kids must understand numbers and triangles and such, else the "proofs" are only manipulations of abstract symbols. (There's a small faction within mathematics which thinks this is all math is.) A demand that a "proof" be given that crypto anarchy is inevitable is thus not very interesting. What is more interesting is to establish the "paving stones" which make it more obvious what the implications of certain technologies are. (And thoughtful government analysts, even those who are no great friends of crypto anarchy, point to the dangers of crypto anarchy for the precise reason that they have enough of the paving stones to see how things are likely to unfold if certain trends continue.) Those of us who started the list, or who arrived in the first few years, were generally immersed in the writings of David Friedman, Bruce Benson, Vernor Vinge, Orson Scott Card, Robert Heinlein, Douglas Hofstadter, Hakim Bey, Martin Gardner, Robert Axelrod, Henry Hazlitt, and, last but not least, Ayn Rand. Not all of us had read all of this stuff, but it was a common enough set amongst techno-libertarians. Some were more knowledgeable about evolutionary game theory, others more knowledgeable about Unix. But when someone referred to Friedman's essays on Icelandic anarchy, it didn't draw the blanks I think we now see. Maybe people in those days, pre-Web, read more books. If someone didn't understand the reference, they tended to ask politely. Lately, we've had outsiders arrive on the list hostile to the core ideas. Though there is no ideological purity test, it is not interesting when someone like Aimee Farr--just the latest in a series--arrives and says, essentially, "OK, prove it to me!" Lacking the paving stones, the basis vectors, the building blocks, giving her some kind of logical proof would be pointless. And, as I said to her, if she wants one from me she can pay my daily consulting fee for as long as it takes me to write one. Many reading lists have been given over the years. Use search engines to find them (much Cypherpunks traffic shows up in Google, for example.) My Cyphernomicon has a bunch of book references, too, as well as supplying mini-essays on hundreds of topics. Read Steven Levy's article in "Wired." Read the essays of Eric Hughes, Duncan Frissell, and many others. Read about the Law Merchant, about international trade even before nation-states existed, much less international courts of justice. Read about the early bankers and how they enforced contracts. Read, read, read. I'm not saying every subscriber or interested person here should read hundreds of books. Just reading half a dozen, and thinking "outside the box" about the implications, is more important than reading but not integrating the ideas. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 1:46 AM -0700 4/15/01, Ryan Sorensen wrote:
Read the hundreds of articles on these matters. Read "The Enterprise of Law: Justice without the State," by Bruce Benson. Read David Friedman's "Machinery of Freedom," and his other books. Read...
The point is, Aimee, _read the background material_.
Admittedly, I'm not Aimee. I was wondering if I could get a few helpful pointers towards the background material? Any assistance would be much appreciated.
See my articles earlier today referencing background reading. Reading lists have been put forth many times over the years. Try using search engines to find them. Here are a handful I suggest you should be familiar with. Some are entertaining, some are works of fiction, some are not light reading, some are... Descriptions of what they are readily available on the Net, e.g., at Amazon. * Vernor Vinge. "True Names." A new edition is supposed to be coming "Real Soon Now." Also, the short stories of Vinge, including "The Ungoverned." * Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." Kids using untraceable pseudonyms. * Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom." (Hayek, Von Mises, Popper, others are part of the world view of Cypherpunks, and the ideas are related to emergent order, complex systems, agents, evolutionary game theory (and "evolutionary economics," though this name is not used), distributed systems, why central planning fails, etc.) * Axelrod, "The Evolution of Cooperation." And everyone should have basic familiarity with the Prisoner's Dilemma, the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, the Tragedy of the Commons, and a handful of other basic "evolutionary economics" ideas. Some of this will be found in Axelrod, some in the books he cites, some in Hofstadter's "Metamagical Themas" book, some in Martin Gardner's books. * Rand, "Atlas Shrugged." (Best read as a teen, in my opinion. I devoured it in 2 days of intense reading at age 16, but haven't been able to get past page 10 in the last 30 years.) * David Friedman, "The Machinery of Freedom." Also, "Law's Order," a more recent treatment of the law from an economic perspective. *Stephenson, "Snow Crash." * Hakim Bey, "TAZ." * Loompanics Press books, Paladin Press books...black markets, etc. * Hazlitt, "Economics in One Lesson." * my own Cyphernomicon, readily findable on the Web with search engines. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 15:14 -0700 on 4/15/01, Tim May wrote:
* Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." Kids using untraceable pseudonyms.
Huh? Excellent book but I don't recall it having the slightest mention of anything remotely applicable to the current thread... Care to refresh my memory? -- ____________________________________________________________________ volatile: Because every program deserves SOME interrupt code... Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott <mailto:kelliott@mac.com> ICQ#23758827 ____________________________________________________________________
At 5:14 PM -0700 4/15/01, Kevin Elliott wrote:
At 15:14 -0700 on 4/15/01, Tim May wrote:
* Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." Kids using untraceable pseudonyms.
Huh? Excellent book but I don't recall it having the slightest mention of anything remotely applicable to the current thread... Care to refresh my memory?
Just what I said: kid using untraceable pseudonyms. If you think this is "not remotely applicable to the current thread," which is a "reading list" for the list, then I can't help you. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 18:04 -0700 on 4/15/01, Tim May wrote:
At 5:14 PM -0700 4/15/01, Kevin Elliott wrote:
At 15:14 -0700 on 4/15/01, Tim May wrote:
* Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." Kids using untraceable pseudonyms.
Huh? Excellent book but I don't recall it having the slightest mention of anything remotely applicable to the current thread... Care to refresh my memory?
Just what I said: kid using untraceable pseudonyms.
If you think this is "not remotely applicable to the current thread," which is a "reading list" for the list, then I can't help you.
That book is one of my favorites. I've read it a half a dozen times and for the life of me I can't think of a single instance in it that fits your description. -- ____________________________________________________________________ volatile: Because every program deserves SOME interrupt code... Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott <mailto:kelliott@mac.com> ICQ#23758827 ____________________________________________________________________
At 05:14 PM 04/15/2001 -0700, Kevin Elliott wrote:
At 15:14 -0700 on 4/15/01, Tim May wrote:
* Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." Kids using untraceable pseudonyms.
Huh? Excellent book but I don't recall it having the slightest mention of anything remotely applicable to the current thread... Care to refresh my memory?
The book wasn't just about Ender being raised to be the Last Bugkiller. Much of the activity was Ender's brother and sister carrying on conversations on The Net, with multi-layered reputation systems affecting who got invited to speak on particular mailing lists, who got listened to, etc. Some of the cypherpunks implications were that we all saw reputation systems as a goal that Really Made Sense, but also that turn out to be much harder to implement, even on non-fictional paper, than to describe in fiction. What kinds of algorithms do you use? How do people outfox them? How do you deal with not only the real Detweilers, but with people using the kinds of pseudonym hacks that Detweiler was constantly ranting against, such as creating a bunch of pseudonyms that all give each other positive ratings and positive reviews of each others' articles, to create a bunch of reputation capital that's undeserved and can later be burned if needed. And what are the chances that Tim's email filters still toss out discussions about Detweiler? :-)
At 18:15 -0700 on 4/15/01, Bill Stewart wrote:
At 05:14 PM 04/15/2001 -0700, Kevin Elliott wrote:
At 15:14 -0700 on 4/15/01, Tim May wrote:
* Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." Kids using untraceable pseudonyms.
Huh? Excellent book but I don't recall it having the slightest mention of anything remotely applicable to the current thread... Care to refresh my memory?
The book wasn't just about Ender being raised to be the Last Bugkiller. Much of the activity was Ender's brother and sister carrying on conversations on The Net, with multi-layered reputation systems affecting who got invited to speak on particular mailing lists, who got listened to, etc.
Ahhh... Now I remember what Tim was referring to... -- ____________________________________________________________________ volatile: Because every program deserves SOME interrupt code... Kevin "The Cubbie" Elliott <mailto:kelliott@mac.com> ICQ#23758827 ____________________________________________________________________
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:
Some of the cypherpunks implications were that we all saw reputation systems as a goal that Really Made Sense, but also that turn out to be much harder to implement, even on non-fictional paper, than to describe in fiction. What kinds of algorithms do you use? How do people outfox them? How do you deal with not only the real Detweilers, but with people using the kinds of pseudonym hacks that Detweiler was constantly ranting against, such as creating a bunch of pseudonyms that all give each other positive ratings and positive reviews of each others' articles, to create a bunch of reputation capital that's undeserved and can later be burned if needed.
One of the other problems with reputation capital is that reputation depends on perspective. The people who I respect and listen to are not always the ones that you will repect and listen to. reputation is a more individual thing. I think if you mapped who people found worthy of reputation that it would break up into a number of different groupings. And sometimes the reputation capital that someone has with me depends on the subject. There are some people I highly regard in the computing feild that I strongly disagree with when it comes to politics or matters of personal hygene. [Insert RMS joke here.] It would be also interesting to see if in the standard Cypherpunkian reputation capital system how many people's votes would be up for sale. [Insert Libertarian joke here.] What I would find more useful in that sense is a system that would allow rating, not for some sense of community barter or whatever, but as a way to weed out the multiple voices. When you start communicating with literally thousands of people, being able to note which are the worthwhile ones and who are the loons without having to go through a pile of notes would be useful. (I have envisioned something like this for my never finished Mail App, but I keep getting distracted by shiney spendable objects.) Making that set of judgements avaiable to others is the tricky part. (There are people whom I regard as friends whom I have to filter much of what they say. Just because they are friends does not mean I agree with them. Just where those points are could become... difficult.) It would be an interesting experiment. I have considered building an IRC server where everyone is a randomly generated nym. You can then judge people ny the content of their words and not by the preconcieved reputation. (Using certificates to track who is who.) You would then be able to rate each nym with whatever rating you wished. The problems I see in such a design are: * Multiple accounts (either cooperating friends or tentacles) * People ditching accounts and rebuilding when their reputation got too bad. * People who are true on some subjects, false on some subjects and meaningless on other subjects. * people who just "play the crowd". * People who are just there just to fuck up the system. It would be an interesting experiment. I have a feeling it would devolve into a game theory-like strategy game at some point though. (Or look like Slashdot, which would be worse.) alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "All power is derived from the barrel of a GNU." - Mao Tse Stallman
At 11:35 PM -0700 4/15/01, Alan Olsen wrote:
On Sun, 15 Apr 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:
Some of the cypherpunks implications were that we all saw reputation systems as a goal that Really Made Sense, but also that turn out to be much harder to implement, even on non-fictional paper, than to describe in fiction. What kinds of algorithms do you use? How do people outfox them? How do you deal with not only the real Detweilers, but with people using the kinds of pseudonym hacks that Detweiler was constantly ranting against, such as creating a bunch of pseudonyms that all give each other positive ratings and positive reviews of each others' articles, to create a bunch of reputation capital that's undeserved and can later be burned if needed.
One of the other problems with reputation capital is that reputation depends on perspective.
Interestingly, nearly everything that is "interesting" depends on perspective (including what is interesting). Entropy and randomness both depend on perspective. The value of some item depends on perspective: what is of high value to Alice may be of little value to Bob. This is part of a much larger issue, and is not just verbal game-playing. Perhaps I was so accustomed to this "relativist" point of view that the fact that reputations share the same characteristics was not at all surprising.
The people who I respect and listen to are not always the ones that you will repect and listen to. reputation is a more individual thing. I think if you mapped who people found worthy of reputation that it would break up into a number of different groupings.
I did a major article on this some years back, about probabalistic belief networks...which is what reputations seem to best map into. The Dempster-Shafer method of propagating beliefs seems most useful. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 11:35 PM 4/15/2001 -0700, Alan Olsen wrote:
One of the other problems with reputation capital is that reputation depends on perspective.
The people who I respect and listen to are not always the ones that you will repect and listen to. reputation is a more individual thing. I think if you mapped who people found worthy of reputation that it would break up into a number of different groupings.
This is why it's unlikely that identities will ever have objective "reputation capital" numbers - different people have different information about the identity, and interpret it differently. However, it's possible to sharpen these fuzzy, relative perspectives by restating them as insurance (or bets, or positions, or guaranties, depending on your moral and regulatory perspective) on the subject of the ratings. Even in the current credit report market, most merchants don't want to deal with the fine details of a person's full credit report, with years' worth of data about debts owed .. which is why Fair Isaac and the credit agencies will boil the credit reports down into credit scores, making it easy to sort credit applications into different "accept at rate X" or "accept at rate Y" or "deny" bins. I suspect that we won't see traditional "credit rating agencies" on the TRW/Equifax model, but risk transfer agencies - who put some assets at risk behind their ratings - e.g., agencies who will take a cut from the profits of a given loan, and who are on the hook as (partial) guarantors of the loan if it's not repaid. This mostly means restating the "credit score" as a "risk factor" - e.g., instead of saying "this person doesn't pay their bills", they'll say "you should get 5% down up front" or "you should get 95% down up front" or "we'd make an unsecured loan to this entity at an interest rate of X%". On one hand, this makes privacy "violations" (judged against current ideals) more widespread - on the other hand, it's likely to make identity theft less likely, as the credit guarantor has a stronger motivation to make sure that the party receiving the loan really does match the dossier supplied to rate the risk involved in making the loan. Getting the credit agencies involved as lenders or guarantors means it's actually good if different agencies rate risk differently - because it means that the transaction can be financed at the lowest available rate, where that rate reflects either especially good or especially poor information and analysis, with the expected effects on the survival of the agency. Credit agencies which include bad (because it was never correct, or because it is obsolete) credit data will end up mispricing the risk involved, which means they'll end up with no business (because they rated risk too high, charged too much interest, and made few/no loans) or too much business. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@well.com "Organized crime is the price we pay for organization." -- Raymond Chandler
At 09:06 AM 4/16/01 -0700, Greg Broiles wrote:
On one hand, this makes privacy "violations" (judged against current ideals) more widespread - on the other hand, it's likely to make identity theft less likely, as the credit guarantor has a stronger motivation to make sure that the party receiving the loan really does match the dossier supplied to rate the risk involved in making the loan.
Getting the credit agencies involved as lenders or guarantors means it's actually good if different agencies rate risk differently - because it means that the transaction can be financed at the lowest available rate, where that rate reflects either especially good or especially poor information and analysis, with the expected effects on the survival of the agency. Credit agencies which include bad (because it was never correct, or because it is obsolete) credit data will end up mispricing the risk involved, which means they'll end up with no business (because they rated risk too high, charged too much interest, and made few/no loans) or too much business.
Currently, the State prohibits the collection of arbitrary data about loan applicants. Only State-blessed information may be collected and analyzed. So a private evaluation system, free of the artificial constraints imposed by the State, already has an advantage.
-- At 06:15 PM 4/15/2001 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:
Some of the cypherpunks implications were that we all saw reputation systems as a goal that Really Made Sense, but also that turn out to be much harder to implement, even on non-fictional paper, than to describe in fiction. What kinds of algorithms do you use? How do people outfox them? How do you deal with not only the real Detweilers, but with people using the kinds of pseudonym hacks that Detweiler was constantly ranting against, such as creating a bunch of pseudonyms that all give each other positive ratings and positive reviews of each others' articles, to create a bunch of reputation capital that's undeserved and can later be burned if needed.
Detweiler repeatedly attempted that hack in several different newsgroups and mailing lists, and repeatedly failed. Everyone would come to the conclusion that he was a loon, and that anyone who agreed with him was either a tentacle or a fellow loon. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Pv3VXt8MhW2h1uZ9BA+Fv59WbPctS11NqXtcerY8 4L1+qnMD9h2+0wL3xVvFr+ahYOOw2D0q2Gos3X70U ----------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ James A. Donald
At 05:14 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Kevin Elliott wrote:
At 15:14 -0700 on 4/15/01, Tim May wrote:
* Orson Scott Card, "Ender's Game." Kids using untraceable pseudonyms.
Huh? Excellent book but I don't recall it having the slightest mention of anything remotely applicable to the current thread... Care to refresh my memory?
Boy and sister geniuses (ca 12 yrs.) adopt pseudonyms and convice the public.
Tim May <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
* Vernor Vinge. "True Names." A new edition is supposed to be coming "Real Soon Now." Also, the short stories of Vinge, including "The Ungoverned."
Speaking of Vinge. He'll be at The Libertarian Futurist Society's 20th anniversary convention May 25-27 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. For Hyatt hotel discount and LFScon panel/event schedule, visit the LFS website (http://www.lfs.org) or call 614-236-5040. Confirmed Prometheus Award winning Guests of Honor: Poul Anderson, L. Neil Smith, F. Paul Wilson, James Hogan, Vernor Vinge, J. Neil Schulman, Brad Linaweaver and Victor Milan. Other panelists include Libertarian sf writers Joseph Martino and Steve Burgauer; LFS Director Victoria Varga, Assistant Director Amy Rule, LFS Board President Michael Grossberg, Vice President Chris Hibbert and LFS members Lynn Maners, Fred Moulton, Matt Gaylor and Jeff Wolfe. I'll be on a panel discussion of the Internet and freedom with L. Neil Smith. Anything I should emphasize? Regards, Matt- ************************************************************************** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, 2175 Bayfield Drive, Columbus, OH 43229 (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **************************************************************************
At 03:14 PM 4/15/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:
See my articles earlier today referencing background reading.
One of the interesting things about Vannevar Bush's Memeweb is that 1. you can legitimately refer any yahoo to 'look it up' in the memeweb and its not terribly rude and 2. said yahoo really can look it up, better than anyone alive to this moment. *This* is what discourages the incredible traffic you'd get if you multiplied the AOL-september effect by the ignorance factor. Claude save us all.
participants (18)
-
Aimee Farr -
Alan Olsen -
Bill Stewart -
David Honig -
Declan McCullagh -
Greg Broiles -
James A. Donald -
Jim Choate -
Jim Choate -
Kevin Elliott -
Matthew Gaylor -
Neil Johnson -
Ray Dillinger -
Reese -
Ryan Sorensen -
Sampo Syreeni -
Sunder -
Tim May