Untraceable Payments, Extortion, and Other Bad Things

[Omegaman]

On Sat, 21 Dec 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

I can conceive of some ways in which only one untraceable anonymous payment
system could be controlled or halted if the aforementioned "bad things"
occurred.

> be released unless a payment is made. Physical acts have a nexus of
> detection at the act itself, the kidnapping, the bomb-planting, etc.
(...)
> "Untraceable payments" refer to payer- and payee-untraceable Chaum-style
> cash. Although for the discussions here of extortion, payee-untraceable
> (the person being paid would not be traceable is my sense of this term)
> digital cash would be sufficient; that the payment originated from XYZ
> Corporation or some account at the Bank of Albania would not stop the acts.

Indeed.  

But criminals are often a stupid and foolish lot.  Many will be caught at
the "nexus" of physical action due to their own ineptitude.  I can envision
several such instances occurring where it is publicized that these were
contract (killings,extortions,kidnappings) in which the individual was to be
paid in Bank of Albani digital cash.  

This publicity and subsequent public outrage result in many corporations and
institutions seizing the moral high ground (and a little good publicity
which could result in more revenue, of course)  and advocating/enforcing a
ban on usage of bank of Albania digital bux.  

The motivation of some of the corporations and banks is their investment in
their own competing forms of digital cash.  The Government is motivated to
support these anti-albanian actions for all the obvious reasons.  The
motivations of the exposing journalists are left as an exercise to the reader.

> How Ed receives the funds without the bits being followed through
> cyberspace is of course an easy exercise for readers here. Anonymous
> remailers with reply-block capabilities, a la Mixmaster, or, my preference,
> posting in a public place, a la the Usenet or other widely-disseminated
> message pools.

All protocols which have to be carefully followed by the Ed.  (He might use
a cutout or two to further muddy the link between him and vic.)  

> Ed takes the crypto credits and redeems them as he sees fit (after some
> unblinding stuff, of course). The redemption order is unlinkable to the
> extortion. 

True, but if Bank of Albania digital cash is not accepted as a method of
payment, what good does this do Ed?  No one will change them because they
are largely worthless.

> So, even if "Mark Twain Bank" and "Bank of America," and, indeed, the rest
> of the U.S. banking establishment eschews untraceability, the presence of
> such services anywhere in the world is enough to make the act described

> workable. And that "anywhere in the world" can, as I mentioned earlier,
> encompass the various underground banking systems already widely in use
> (Tongs, Triads, chop marks, etc. in Asia, and presumably similar systems
> elsewhere). Or it could encompass fairly conventional banks which offer

Not familiar with these systems...

> such untraceable routes for a premium. A $5,000 commission on top of the
> $25,000 transfer would make a lot of the world's banks sit up and take
> notice. And so long as they were not told what the fund transfer was all
> about--Vic is unlikely to gain anything by telling them--they have
> plausible deniability and moral comfort.

> And I surmise that the U.S. Government must have realized this. And
> realized that only by _completely quashing_ all such untraceable payments
> systems can the goals of stopping such "bad uses" be met.

Not to mention the loss of tax revenue....

> Unfortunately for them, and unfortunately for the victims of such crimes,
> no such worldwide stoppage of all such systems seems possible, even with
> draconian police state measures. There are just too many interstices for
> the bits to hide. And too much economic incentive for some persons or banks
> to offer such funds transfer methods.

Of course not.  But unless untraceable digital cash becomes a ubiquitous and
widely used form, it will not be useful for these "bad things" (or any other
purpose

As always, the key is deployment of an untraceable, anonymouse form of
digital cash now.  Wide usage is part of the key to legitimization.  Right
now the government is frantically attempting to marginalize the idea of
fully untraceable digicash with all sorts of four-horsemen publicity.  

If everybody's already using it, they'll be far less likely to switch to a
new digicash-escrow alternative.


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