At 06:44 PM 11/28/04 -0800, 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.

Call me pessimistic, but you seem optimistic to me. At least we're moderately back on topic :-)