Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?

[Peter Hendrickson]

At 4:41 PM 11/8/1996, Matthew Ghio wrote:
> If, as is presumed in this discussion, society will become divided into
> two somewhat distinct groups of people, the crypto-anonymous group and
> the traceable-identifiable group, then the predictable outcome is that
> members of the traceable-identifiable group will become increasingly
> victimized by members of the crypto-anonymous group.  People who are
> easily identifiable and tracked are easy prey.

If people feel they have to go "underground" in order to protect
themselves, you will see near unanimous support for mandatory GAK.
This qualifies as a nightmare scenario for almost everybody, even
many of the readers of this list.

Universal traceability and identifiability is not necessarily a
consequence of GAK.  By universal I mean "available to everyone."
Were this to be a problem, the information would be confined to
"responsible" parties.  I think I can describe a way to do this in
nearly every scenario.  There is certainly no reason why driver's
license data need be on the Web.

Peter Hendrickson
ph at netcom.com