CDR: Re: Amex supports CARNIVORE enabled Anonymity System
A Yahoo wrote: % What a load of shit. If you check that URL the next % thing you see the following release: % % http://www.privada.net/news/releases/20000717.html % # % # Privada's Technology Protects Users' Privacy, Only % # Monitors Those Who Abuse It % # [snip] % % Obviously AMEX & Privada don't have a clue as to the % history of privacy and privacy tools... % % What about civil john doe complaints? % What about Church of $cientology and Penet.fi? % What about the entire key escrow debate? % What about the entire clipper debate? % % If anyone really things that 'identity escrow' enabled % privacy products are what the market is looking for, % they are seriously clueless. % % This is obviously snake oil. No, the emphasis is on what consumers in general want. And it delivers. Those wishing to push the edge of free speech aren't going to be satisfied, but the new services meet the needs of regular consumers/people accessing the Internet. That market dwarfs what ZKS/Anonymizer will ever get. Even the Anonymizer shut down its free version due to abuse. And Yahoo has cooperated with civil subpeonas regarding stock touting / company disparagement. Yet you use it. It's free and does what you need. AmEx is offering their services for free for cardholders. ZKS isn't exactly mixmaster WWW surfing, at some point there will be traceability, given the necessary court order. Albeit ZKS seems to be the best at what it does. Too bad the cardholders aren't setting up for you to choose your privacy provider, like cable is being pressured to allow choice of ISP.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 1:59 PM -0400 on 9/18/00, George@orwellian.org wrote:
A Yahoo wrote [about AMEX's "anonymous" credit card technology]: % What a load of shit.
That market dwarfs what ZKS/Anonymizer will ever get.
Again, boys and girls, barring unforeseen events, like repeals in the laws of physics, and/or human behavior, :-), the *only* thing that matters in financial operations is transaction cost, and certainly *not* financial privacy. The *only* way to get ubiquitous financial anonymity is for a technology, like internet bearer transaction protocols (blind signatures, MicroMint, small signed coins, whatever), to be *cheaper* than the alternative, which, for the moment, is internet-executed and proprietary network-settled book entry transactions: credit cards under SSL, cleared by VISA and MasterCard, settled by FedWire and/or SWIFT, modulo the odd ACH "check" transaction, bla, bla, bla... Book-entry transactions can *not* be anonymous, folks, because, of course, you couldn't send someone to *jail* if they lie about a book-entry, otherwise, right? I mean, if everyone could lie about a given book-entry transaction, and get away with it consistently, *without* going to jail, could you imagine that *any* book-entry transaction of that type would clear, much less settle, ever again? I thought not... Unlike internet bearer financial cryptography protocols, the non-repudiation "technology" of book-entry settlement is non-existent. Unless you count ballistic technology, anyway. :-). More to the point, a given inherently-private technology, like Chaum's blind signatures for instance, must be *waaay* cheaper, on a risk adjusted basis, ceteris paribus, whatever, than a public one, like SSL-encrypted book-entries. Like a thousand times cheaper, say. Which is, oddly enough, about the cost differential right now between book-entry transactions (like stock and bond trades going through DTC or CREST, or credit cards, or checks) and physical delivery of paper/metal bearer instruments (like "my Brinks to your Cage" delivery versus payment, or dollar bills, or coins or stamps). So, until people actually *do* get bearer financial cryptography protocols onto the net, and cheap enough (and believe me, people are working on it :-)), it is important to remember that *any* book-entry transaction is, almost by definition, a "public" transaction and not a private one. A "public" transaction "guaranteed" to be "fair" by a *government*, at the point of a gun. So, you shouldn't be surprised at all when, horrors, there's *no* financial privacy in the "mainstream" markets. None in the least. Moreover, that diminishing financial privacy will, um, increase, as Moore's law increases that cost-differential between automated book-entry, and its only current extant competition, which is, at the moment, *not* internet bearer transactions, but, in fact, *paper* bearer transactions. Paper bearer transactions which, if you'll notice, *nobody* wants to do anymore. :-). Contrawise, you should assume that almost *anyone* who offers you a "private" book-entry transaction is, for lack of a better word, lying, frankly -- okay, "marketing" :-) -- *especially* if they're promising to do it over the net(1). Hence the "safeguards" in just about everyone's "privacy" products, which amount to no privacy at all. Cheers, RAH (1) Okay, I *might* :-) excuse Mondex from this rule, I suppose, but only because the smart-cards themselves are physically swappable, and thus at the physical, card-to-card level, anyway, are bearer instruments, but I would only say so under a regime in which those cards *contents*, the balances therein, are exchangeable for, or better, denominated, in some *other* internet bearer instrument like Chaumian cash, which may, I'm afraid, defeat the economics of Mondex altogether. Obviously, Doug Barnes has pointed this out more than once or twice here and elsewhere. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQEVAwUBOcZylcUCGwxmWcHhAQFr2gf8DRr6R94+2u4swcn8eyrkwCq34tyfDtqn houDyMHBuoyqXjlsv1LguSWIIF6dvD7c/QkMH1/OSJ+mM3s/g52DOMF1EvxHLzMo qJ/WYO90MQb8+lFZF+ebTiGZ5mFGzYX1xMWWpgCzuJrjACe1ZfUuFd1/mCUM5Irl FM6+NQS4396lsQ1wGi/FSflDejs1ejE2ou2so9ryCwq4flXjLoImsiAiuMZpA7py ptE6JlsGQL8nKga3EVmQeejedHZqKyt40GxO9CcGf0/rHRrYw3abmzc/SANxa+XA ysi4zwQAguPoxRdo912rff0IXu68t1atNpXMT8Mhrr9MC/EWmf2iYg== =Y6Tg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
On Mon, 18 Sep 2000, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
(1) Okay, I *might* :-) excuse Mondex from this rule, I suppose, but only because the smart-cards themselves are physically swappable, and thus at the physical, card-to-card level, anyway, are bearer instruments, but I would only say so under a regime in which those cards *contents*, the balances therein, are exchangeable for, or better, denominated, in some *other* internet bearer instrument like Chaumian cash, which may, I'm afraid, defeat the economics of Mondex altogether. Obviously, Doug Barnes has pointed this out more than once or twice here and elsewhere.
In order for a currency to stand, it really has to be backed up by a commodity. "Note may be exchanged for gold at any branch", followed by a short list of branches, and the guarantee of a company or organization with physical assets in *EXCESS* of its issued notes, is really about the only thing that can convince people of the validity of a new currency. Banks are able to issue more currency than they have hard assets - but they also have massive insurance infrastructures backing them up and the weight of tradition behind them. A Digital Currency issuer wouldn't have that -- thus, a digital currency issuer could only be trusted to the extent of its assets. I've watched digital currency issuers come and go - E-cash, digicash, beenz, flooz, first digital, etc... Well, not all of them are out of business, but none of them really seem to be taking off either. Damn few of them toed the line on privacy, and all of them were beholden to massive venture capital with all the riskiness and pressure on the near term that that implies. Nobody limited their issue to their level of assets or backed up their notes with anything that would have value if the company folded - and so far nobody has been trusted by the markets. Pepsico could issue a viable digital currency -- which you could use to buy Pizza Hut pizzas or KFC for delivery, or trade to someone else. But can some startup, without massive financial muscles, balanced on the razor edge of venture capital? No way. Bear
At 5:46 PM -0700 on 9/18/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
In order for a currency to stand, it really has to be backed up by a commodity.
Sure you have to "ground out" into something tangible, or at least a fiat currency ;-), sooner or later. Someday, of course, you won't need the fiat bit, but pure commodities aren't the end-state. You probably need a mix of stuff, including financial proxies like debt and equity indices, and so on. But the core problem is measuring inflation. Fortunately, :-), Paul Harrison and I have this giant rant in the can about non-state bearer synthetic numeraires, using things like digital bearer warehouse receipts for the hard stuff, a proxy for the CPI... Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
At 9:39 PM -0400 on 9/18/00, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
Someday, of course, you won't need the fiat bit, but pure commodities aren't the end-state. You probably need a mix of stuff, including financial proxies like debt and equity indices, and so on. But the core problem is measuring inflation. Fortunately, :-), Paul Harrison and I have this giant rant in the can about non-state bearer synthetic numeraires, using things like digital bearer warehouse receipts for the hard stuff, a proxy for the CPI...
By the way, the above isn't necessarily the end state, either. A lot of people, probably me among them, subscribe to the theory advanced by Eugene Fama (Efficient Market Hypothesis) and Fisher Black (Black-Scholes option pricing formula) that if switching out of the numeraire is cheap enough (insert Moore's Law here), it's probably better to keep and price transactions in *appreciating* assets instead of assets which don't earn a return. Cheers, RAH -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
participants (3)
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George＠Orwellian.Org -
R. A. Hettinga -
Ray Dillinger