anonymous bacon

[Jonathan Corbet]

The following, from RISKS, deserves redistribution....

Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 13:04:47 -0400
From: pcw at access.digex.net (Peter Wayner)
Subject: Bringing Home the Anonymous Bacon

The *Baltimore Sun* reports in its 17 Sep 1996 issue that people in
Baltimore are paying for drugs with meat (page A1! [pretty saucy!]).  
Perhaps this is not yet anonymous digital cash, but certainly anonymous.

   [Now someone is going to propose keeping a database of all sides of beef,
   and steganographically watermarking the meat in the context of digitally
   signed scannable grade-stamps.  Perhaps the next step in monitoring the
   private drug-meat trade would be to escrow the inspectors' private keys,
   derived from the product of two U.S. Primes, and put the database up on
   the net: the T-bone connected to the M-bone, etc.?  PGN]