On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 5:29 PM, Jim Bell <jamesdbell8@yahoo.com> wrote:
And interesting idea to be sure. Though while you could easily enough verifiy the data/leaker and arrange payment semantics, there does not at this moment seem to exists a suitably anonymous pay system for even $100kUSD other than a briefcase in the woods, bitcoin appears to be balance trackable at that level and it's useless to the leaker if they can't deposit or draw on it.
One obvious problem with "money for leaks" is that, who decides what a given leak is worth? So, fixed prices are probably out. But, the actual leak can be posted, and the potential donors will decide what they will give. As I recall, one problem with the Wikileaks system was that its ability to collect donations (through credit cards) was impeded. Presumably, Zerocoin will shortly become available for truly anonymous donations. But, it occurs to me that even though the leaker should be able to collect the reward truly anonymously, perhaps it should be documentable the fact that he/she actually obtained that amount, for the encouragement of future, potential leakers. Could the donations/rewards go through the leak-organization in a pseudonymous (at least) fashion, and then be given to the anonymous leaker, in a way that is documented sufficiently so that people considering becoming leakers are aware of the actual rewards being given?
I think because you as leak recipient could defraud the leaker of their efforts by unwrapping and placing your own identity stamp on the leak, the leaker would have to publish the leak themselves with their own ID stamp into say a new time-secure blockchain dedicated to leaking. Then the payment board would examine the chain for prior leaks of the same material and award payment to the first such leaker. If for some reason the leaker cannot leak to the chain, such as with inconceivably digitizable/transferable materiel, they must obviously establish the traditional trust mechanisms with their receiving/publishing partner who will enter leaker's leak and ID in such chain as proxy. Deciding what a leak is worth could be done in the usual AP fashion by donating to classes of leaks. Blockchain systems already have some N of M signature requirements to release funds. Zerocoin or some anon payment is still needed. And payment to leakers ID would show up for verification in that system.