Richard Kenneway raises some interesting points about reputation, asks why we should believe nyms (or otherwise relatively unknown new posters), and even to what extent we should believe people we have more experience with. Indeed, the world is filled with strangers who want to sell me things, who threaten me with violence unless I follow often obscure or completely unknown laws they have generated, etc. In a typical election, the difference between the candidates and total strangers is typically the narrow bottleneck of a few TV reports and ads, and an entry in the Voter's Guide. Yet we trust these people to be our leaders! Based on Black Unicorn's posts to cypherpunks, I'd say our level of knowledge about him is slightly better than the typical voter's knowledge of a typical political candidate. I call this the Voter Test. The good news is that Black Unicorn isn't threatening violence (as contrasted with the implicit violence threatened by politicians, and the both implicit and explicit violence threatened by our own voluminous contributor, Detweiler/S.Boxx/Zen Master), nor even trying to sell something. B.U.'s simply arguing that numbered accounts exist in Liechtenstein. I agree that the mere statement of a nym doesn't satisfy the case. The nym can greatly bolster the case by giving us "mutual information" that could be cross-referenced with what he says to resolve the issue. This does _not_ have to be personal info, and I urge B.U. to avoid the tempatation of posting where he went to college, etc. in the future. One good piece of info would be to post phone number(s) in Liectenstein, unrelated to B.U.'s own employer, that we could call to verify his claim. (For example, the number of a librarian who would know, or best of all the phone numbers of the bank(s) who offer these accounts). The side claim, that B.U. once worked in Liechtenstein, could be strengenthed by telling a trustworthy list member who has lived in Liechtenstein, info that would probably be known only by somebody who his lived for a while in Liechtenstein. (Finding such a person might be unlikely, but who knows). Perhaps there is are easier ways B.U. can demonstrate his case along these lines, if the above are too inonvenient for what may be to B.U. a fairly unimportant argument. There must be an entire artform already developed o n this kind of credentialling, selective revelation of information, etc., I'd love to hear more comments from people with insight, epxerience, etc. in the matter. Nick Szabo szabo@netcom.com