Re: ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)]
-------- Original Message -------- From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> Apparently from: owner-cypherpunks@minder.net To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: ALTA/DMT privacy [was: Re: (No Subject)] Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:13:59 -0800
-- On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, Nostradumbass@SAFe-mail.net wrote:
If you fund you accounts using money orders, you may be safe (depending on whether you've employed others to purchase the money orders or your physical identity is being captured at the money order agent during the transaction).
Some people offer a cash to e-gold service.
Though this is mostly discovered through direct communications, for obvious reasons.
Deposit a bundle of notes in their account, they will sell you e-gold. You use the low order bits of the amount as an ID.
Others have used the serial number of one of the bills submitted (e.g., the one highlighted with a yellow marker).
ALTA/DMT does have a certain degree of un-linkability in that once accounts are deleted all db references in the system to that account are also deleted from all ALTA/DMT dbs.
Trust us. Would we lie to you?
This info was obtained from discussions with the developers, experiments with the system and examination of the code.
On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, Nostradumbass@SAFe-mail.net wrote:
E-gold and other DGCs do not do much if any due diligence in checking account holder identification
Unfortunately, they also don't due much if any due diligence in identifying themselves in messages to real or potential customers, so it's extremely difficult to determine if I've gotten any administrative messages that really _were_ from them as opposed to the N fraudsters sending out mail asking you to log in to e-g0ld.com or whatever fake page lets them steal your egold account number and password so they can drain your balance. A policy of PGP-signing all their messages using a key that's published on their web pages would be a good start, though it's still possible to trick some fraction of people into accepting the wrong keys. For now, my basic assumption is that any communications I receive that purport to be from them are a fraud, and it's frustrating that there's no good mechanism for reporting that to e-gold. At 07:08 PM 12/10/2003 -0500, Nostradumbass@SAFe-mail.net wrote:
-------- Original Message -------- From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com> Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:13:59 -0800
On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, Nostradumbass@SAFe-mail.net wrote: ...
ALTA/DMT does have a certain degree of un-linkability in that once accounts are deleted all db references in the system to that account are also deleted from all ALTA/DMT dbs.
Trust us. Would we lie to you?
This info was obtained from discussions with the developers, experiments with the system and examination of the code.
You can't tell if the code you're examining is the real code, or whether it will continue to be the real code in the future. You can't tell if the system is making backups of its databases. You can't tell if the experiments you're making with their system are really detecting that there's no information stored, or merely that it's not telling _you_ where they stored it. You can't tell if they're stashing session keys somewhere for the Echelon folks to correlate with their wiretap data. You can't distinguish whether any system is sufficiently advanced or merely a rigged demo, nor can you tell which one this system is. You can't tell from discussions with the developers whether they're lying to you, at least unless they're bad at it. You can't tell from experiments with the system that did in fact pay you the money that they should have whether they'll always do so in the future. You can't tell from extremely detailed experiments where they give you the root passwords to all their machines and let you watch the bits go in and out whether all future transactions will be handled the same way or whether they're just stringing you along until there's enough real money in the system or enough money from real suspects that the owners or various monkeys on their back want to rip off or rat out. You're back to trusting them. I don't know them, so I don't know if they're trustable, but there are people in this business who are, as well as others who aren't. You can tell whether you've given them any real information, and if the system doesn't collect it, it can't rat you out. But otherwise, it's basically trust.
On Dec 10, 2003, at 6:20 PM, Bill Stewart wrote:
On 10 Dec 2003 at 15:19, Nostradumbass@SAFe-mail.net wrote:
E-gold and other DGCs do not do much if any due diligence in checking account holder identification
Unfortunately, they also don't due much if any due diligence in identifying themselves in messages to real or potential customers, so it's extremely difficult to determine if I've gotten any administrative messages that really _were_ from them as opposed to the N fraudsters sending out mail asking you to log in to e-g0ld.com or whatever fake page lets them steal your egold account number and password so they can drain your balance.
A policy of PGP-signing all their messages using a key that's published on their web pages would be a good start, though it's still possible to trick some fraction of people into accepting the wrong keys. For now, my basic assumption is that any communications I receive that purport to be from them are a fraud, and it's frustrating that there's no good mechanism for reporting that to e-gold.
I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, by the way). If I ever determine that E-Gold personnel have faked an account on my behalf, or are complicit in any way with stealing from me, I will of course think that killing their children, their parents, and them is moral. E-gold was never even slightly interesting to me for reasons I talked about a few years ago--the notion that a bar of gold moving between shelves in someone's hotel room in Barbados or Guyana or wherever is equivalent to untraceability is silly Randroid idol-worship raised to the fourth power. The scandals reported--and not meaniingfully rebutted--several years ago confirm to me the whole thing is some Randroid fantasy built on sand. --Tim May --Tim May "Ben Franklin warned us that those who would trade liberty for a little bit of temporary security deserve neither. This is the path we are now racing down, with American flags fluttering."-- Tim May, on events following 9/11/2001
-- On 10 Dec 2003 at 19:31, Tim May wrote:
I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, by the way).
These are messagers from scammers. e-gold never sends out email.
E-gold was never even slightly interesting to me for reasons I talked about a few years ago--the notion that a bar of gold moving between shelves in someone's hotel room in Barbados or Guyana or wherever is equivalent to untraceability is silly Randroid idol-worship raised to the fourth power.
Every atom of gold is identical to every other atom of gold. There is only one stable isotope. E-gold does not provide untraceability -- but gold does. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sxD6FejwJO/bYQH9Fbek/lB3u1uXGOqk+YI57Vuk 4FLAcei7iIdGUWnXrQjBihOx2iKvPSrxZE2pKApjM
On Dec 11, 2003, at 11:54 AM, James A. Donald wrote:
-- On 10 Dec 2003 at 19:31, Tim May wrote:
I receive several messages a month saying I need to re-verify information with an E-gold account (which I never recall establishing, by the way).
These are messagers from scammers. e-gold never sends out email.
E-gold was never even slightly interesting to me for reasons I talked about a few years ago--the notion that a bar of gold moving between shelves in someone's hotel room in Barbados or Guyana or wherever is equivalent to untraceability is silly Randroid idol-worship raised to the fourth power.
Every atom of gold is identical to every other atom of gold. There is only one stable isotope.
E-gold does not provide untraceability -- but gold does.
Where tax authorities get people is in the transfer _in to_ and _out of_ certain kinds of accounts, be they Cayman Island or Swiss bank accounts, whatever. The issue with opening a Swiss bank account and wiring money into it, or depositing Federal Reserve Notes into it has NOTHING to do with FRNs having serial numbers and hence being traceable. The issue is with their own reporting to the IRS (these days) and to stops in place to stop the wiring of said money or the transport of said FRNs. What *form* the "item of value" is inside the bank, be it gold bars or Spanish doubloons or stacks of $20 bills or diamonds, is unimportant. In fact, for all intents and purposes the "item of value" inside the bank can be marks in a ledger book, which is effectively the situation today. (It is true that what is stored inside a bank, be it gold coins or Federal Reserve Notes, becomes important if and when enough depositors ask for their money in that particular form. But this is an issue of believing the bank does in fact store gold dust or doubloons or FRNs, not anything about the intrinsic untraceability of such things!) In other words, any bank except for "U-Stor-It-Yourself" safe deposit systems, is basically a black box with beliefs by I/O users about how likely it is to behave according to its specifications. That some of the gold fetishists here keep perpetuating this deep misunderstanding of the issues is...unsurprising. --Tim May
-- James A. Donald:
Every atom of gold is identical to every other atom of gold. There is only one stable isotope.
E-gold does not provide untraceability -- but gold does.
Tim May:
Where tax authorities get people is in the transfer _in to_ and _out of_ certain kinds of accounts, be they Cayman Island or Swiss bank accounts, whatever. The issue with opening a Swiss bank account and wiring money into it, or depositing Federal Reserve Notes into it has NOTHING to do with FRNs having serial numbers and hence being traceable. The issue is with their own reporting to the IRS (these days) and to stops in place to stop the wiring of said money or the transport of said FRNs.
The fact that you need a lot of ID to open a swiss bank account, and very little ID to open a pecunix account ultimately has everything to do with transport of FRNs
What *form* the "item of value" is inside the bank, be it gold bars or Spanish doubloons or stacks of $20 bills or diamonds, is unimportant.
Bank accounts have value because this stuff gets moved between the outside and the the inside of the bank. When it gets moved between inside and outside, the form matters.
In fact, for all intents and purposes the "item of value" inside the bank can be marks in a ledger book, which is effectively the situation today.
And the ultimate holder of those marks is the federal reserve -- whereupon you are screwed. Reality is that you can do stuff with a gold demoninated account that you cannot do with a federal reserve dollar demoninated account, and you really should ask yourself: Why is it so? Indeed, you can do stuff with an australian dollar demoninated account that you cannot do with a federal reserve dollar demoninated account, which may explain why so many internet gold currency dealers are located in Australia.
That some of the gold fetishists here keep perpetuating this deep misunderstanding of the issues is...unsurprising.
Reality is that gold denominated accounts are different. Observe this difference, then ask yourself why is it so. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG dgc/6bEVNysFdnfP7WNdUlY88c0N8EW4FpSJGCgs 4UbJQQDrpPXxtyBvHRcTPi2GBXEeVul6XkRQScePv
participants (4)
-
Bill Stewart -
James A. Donald -
Nostradumbass＠SAFe-mail.net -
Tim May