The future will be easy to use

[Jon Lasser]

On Tue, 28 Nov 1995, James A. Donald wrote:

> >Not if you're encrypting a Credit Card transaction to ship physical 
> >goods.  In that case, I'm going to certainly want to link a key ID to a 
> >physical body (or at least address) if I'm the seller, so as to limit 
> >liability as best I can.
> 
> Not at all:  All you need to do is be able to prove you shipped 
> to the address requested:  You do not have to know what the 
> relationship is between the address requested and identity 
> paying you to ship.

That's if you're accusing the merchant of fraud. I'm positing someone's 
using a stolen credit card number.  (Yes, these will still exist for at 
least a while after e-cash becomes commonplace).  If I'm a merchant, I'm 
going to really want (if I know it's possible) to ship only to what's 
been "the address on the card" (or, in reality, in the database under the 
card's number) so that it's harder (not impossible, harder) for people to 
defraud me.

> > However, if you have optional linking of ID and name, shippers will only 
> > ship to keys with such attributes. Because just ID and address, it could 
> > be a "hit and run" type attack shipped to a safe maildrop.
> 
> This argument makes no sense at all:  I am going to attack my
> enemies by paying people to send books, computers, and stuff
> to them?

No; you're going to steal from your enemies by having them ship things to 
you without payment.

Note that in an ecash economy, this isn't a problem.  The original post 
was about the transition between the current economy and a "cypherpunks" 
economy, during which I suggested that encryption would be used to 
protect credit card numbers (and be a "proof of identity" -- which I was 
claiming wouldn't work without ecash (proof of non-fraud payment))

Jon
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lasser                <jlasser at rwd.goucher.edu>            (410)494-3072 
          Visit my home page at http://www.goucher.edu/~jlasser/
  You have a friend at the NSA: Big Brother is watching. Finger for PGP key.