extortion via digital cash

[scottb at aca.ca]

 ----------
>From: azur
>Subject:  Re: extortion via digital cash
>Date: Tuesday, October 15, 1996 2:18PM
>
<SNIP>

>Although Digicash's ecash offers anonymity to the payor it does not to the
>payee.  The reasons have to do with the way coins are blinded.  So LE
>could, with the bank's cooperation, easily associate the two sides of a
>transaction.  This was intentional on Chaum's part, either for moral or
>practical political considerations.  Its probably only a relatively minor
>patch to allow one ecash purse (the kidnapper's) to generate the blind
>token values so that another (similarly patched) purse (the vicitim's) can
>submit them to the mint and return the minted coins to the kidnapper (e.g.,
>by posting on a popular Usenet group).  In this scenario the only
>reasonable way left to track the money is via linkage (the size and timing
>of deposits and withdrawls in the kidnapper's account).

I would tend to think that if you held on to the money long enough, you 
would
thwart them tracking it via linkage-especially once it becomes more 
commonplace
to do electronic transactions on the Net.  Actually, if you wait long 
enough, you
likely will  run the risk of there being a crackdown on nym servers, 
remailers, etc, and
maybe even specialy designed cancel-bots on usenet.

/sb