At 09:42 PM 11/25/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote:
Well, I guess I agree. However, there is some issues of Cypherpunkly importance here, particularly concerning nation-states fighting other nation-states. Though I can't consider myself a true-believing anarchist, my own personal reason for continuing to post on the subject was to illustrate that, as long as Group-of-Bandits X continues to utilize our tax dollars to fuck over geographically removed Group of Bandits Y (and their citizenry),
Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. This is why there are carnivore boxen aplenty. The knurls on the police-state knob are getting worn, it is cranked up so frequently now. Useful resistance comes from asymmetric physical feedback such as experienced in Lebanon, S. Arabia, off the coast of Yemen, in a few embassies somewhere in africa, in the trains of Madrid, Okla city, and some degenerate US east coast cities a few years back, the latter indicating that "geographically removed" is less important, and the only incident that Joe Voter is likely to remember. Until the next one, of course; Joe's buffer is not terribly capacious. ---- A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government. --George Washington
Variola wrote...
Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. This is why there are carnivore boxen aplenty. The knurls on the police-state knob are getting worn, it is cranked up so frequently now.
Useful resistance comes from asymmetric physical feedback such as experienced in Lebanon, S. Arabia, off the coast of Yemen, in a few embassies somewhere in africa, in the trains of Madrid, Okla city, and some degenerate US east coast cities a few years back, the latter indicating that "geographically removed" is less important, and the only incident that Joe Voter is likely to remember. Until the next one, of course; Joe's buffer is not terribly capacious.
Well, perhaps. Then again, consider though primordial blacknet systems currently labeled P2P. They don't currently present a big problem to Group-of-Bandits X, but it does cause some of their bigger enablers (ie, the record industry) to bitch a bit. As a result, they are turning up the pressure slowly, but only just fast enough for such systems to proliferate while evolving a nice protective coating (despite all the recent lawsuits). By the time these systems represent a destabilising influence (ie, you can pay someone for a file over anonymous swarmed P2P) it'll be too late. In short, Group-of-Bandits X is a group of bandits precisely because they couldn't survive otherwise...ie, they're not smart enough. They'll eventually go the way of the dodo, though they can prolong their exodus somewhat through drastic means. The OBL route, however, does seem to have its merits and is historically quite effective (Algeria, Iraq...). A little too messy for my tastes, however, and blowing up the building I work in won't be worth the number of virgins I'd have coming to me. -TD
-- On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch.
You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled, determined, disciplined, and united. Observed police states are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome.
This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems.
The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to go before police states are the problem. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG j/Q7ovPCBpocpAweY6EuWipd1SYuu09GuF0FDGs4 4F1phVigtAvUzPhC0QjPDP/3SKkY4KUtZc5hRUL9a
On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 21:44, James A. Donald wrote:
-- On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch.
You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled, determined, disciplined, and united. Observed police states are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome.
This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems.
The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to go before police states are the problem.
Heh. When the stasi come a-callin' tell them they'll have to wait because you've got bigger problems. Wonder how well that would work? I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a piece of the action to act basically as an insurer of the vendor's good faith. If there's a problem with the service or merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the intermediary is responsible for making the buyer whole. Is there some reason this wouldn't work? If not, why hasn't anyone tried it yet? Not enough cash flow to make it worth their while? * There's a proper word for "trusted intermediaries" in this context, but hanged if I can remember it.
Steve Furlong wrote...
I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a piece of the action to act basically as an insurer of the vendor's good faith. If there's a problem with the service or merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the intermediary is responsible for making the buyer whole.
There's nothing particularly unreasonable about this, from a risk persepctive. In fact, credit card companies already work like this more or less...they can afford to protect cardmembers from Fraud precisely because of the economies of scale. As for the card industry itself, it is already reputation based. People pay up not because they're afraid to get arrested or litigated against, but because they want to preserve their Reputation with the Rating agencies (real deadbeats don't care about their reputation, and most of the money they spend is never recovered.) -TD
-- Major Variola:
Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch.
This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems.
James A. Donald:
The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to go before police states are the problem.
Steve Furlong
Heh. When the stasi come a-callin' tell them they'll have to wait because you've got bigger problems. Wonder how well that would work?
The stasi are not a callin yet on ecash, and have not been particularly effective against people publishing bittorrents.
I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make use of trusted intermediaries?
People issuing e-cash systems want to be irrevocable and anonymous, in part because the market niche for revocable payments is occupied by paypal and credit card companies, but they are running into trouble from fraudsters. They also have trouble from states, but as yet the trouble from states is merely the usual mindless bureaucratic regulatory harassment that disrupts all businesses, not any specific hostility to difficult-to-trace extranational payments.
The vendors register with the intermedi- ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a piece of the action to act basically as an insurer of the vendor's good faith. If there's a problem with the service or merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the intermediary is responsible for making the buyer whole. Is there some reason this wouldn't work? If not, why hasn't anyone tried it yet? Not enough cash flow to make it worth their while?
Lots of people have tried it, with varying degrees of success. Not much demand for it yet. A big problem is that whenever any such a website achieves some degree of acceptance, a storm of fake websites appear imitating its name, its look and feel, with urls that looks very similar. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Y34+Yhj/+imvS+mJMNI1gisrEu1m1KVnVZ1XWcQC 4IiGQ9ui1sYZ89OBlTxmM6HA8I+qJa2Q8CwcRJu3c
participants (4)
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James A. Donald -
Major Variola (ret) -
Steve Furlong -
Tyler Durden