CDR: Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online

[Tim May]

At 3:11 PM -0500 11/22/00, Alan Olsen wrote:
>On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, David Honig wrote:
>
>>  At 08:31 PM 11/21/00 -0500, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>>  >
>>  >Even if they couldn't find a specific law to charge the
>>  >operator of an AP server with, or couldn't get a conviction
>>  >on the laws they'd charged him/her with, they would doubtless
>>  >issue a court order commanding the operators of the server
>>  >to cease and desist.
>>
>>  Correct, except that you haven't grasped that it will be impossible
>>  to trace anything to anyone.
>
>*Except* the hosting server. Legal "whack-a-mole" games will commence soon
>after discovery. (Or they will just yank the entries out of the root DNS
>servers or screw with the routing tables on the backbone.)

My comments will be about _any_ controversial server (*), not just an 
"AP server."

(* There is no need for a "server" in most cases, as we shall see.)

Someone offering some prize, or some payoff, or some lottery, need 
not be in an identifiable, traceable location. Payoffs are based on 
reputation, ultimately. As we have seen in the debate about meatspace 
identity, having someone's true name and location is only ONE FACET 
of increasing belief or confidence.

Put simply, some people will have more faith that they can collect 
from "the Controversial Practice Server" (substitute AP as desired) 
if they can find a DNS number and physical address for the CP Server.

But this increased faith is both illusory and unneeded.

Once decoupled from a DNS or address, and motivated by reputation, 
expectation, and other Bayesian issues, then the CP Server can itself 
post anonymously.

This is why I architected BlackNet as I did, back in 1993. No 
traceability, and Usenet and other such fora would have to be shut 
down to block it.


>
>  > To see this, you need to imagine truly anonymous payment schemes
>>  and truly anonymous information publishing.  [The latter tech
>>  exists, the former has to deal with interfacing with the US dominated
>>  financial web, and exchanging ecredits for meatthings.  Meat being
>>  succeptible to guns & cruise missiles, of course.]
>
>The host of the site is the only one with his ass left hanging out.

There is no need to have any such site. Think Mojo. Think BlackNet. 
Think peer-to-peer.

>
>I disagree.  I don't believe Jim really was willing to consider the social
>implications of his scheme.
>
>He seemed to think that the only target of this would be the government.
>
>I think that there would be a much bigger field of targets than that.
>
>Think about it.  If you had the chance to have people killed without any
>posibility of capture, who would it be?

I agree. I said as much at the time Jim first came to us with his 
"wonderful idea." (He came to our list after being referred to it, 
and to my work on untraceable assassinations, by Hal Finney. When Jim 
first arrived, circa 1994-5, IIRC, he really didn't know much if 
anything about untraceable digital cash. He later wove this into his 
basic core ideas for AP.)

I fully agree that once untraceable payments may be made reliably 
that the targets will be picked more directly. I said this quite 
clearly in my "Crypto Anarchist Manifesto," published on the Net in 
1988. This was fully obvious to me even earlier than this, and 
apparently obvious to others soon after hearing enough details of how 
Chaum's protocols worked.

The late Phil Salin and I met with Chaum sometime around late 1988 
and it was clear he understood the implications, but had chosen not 
to focus on these political implications. I believe our discussions 
with him _may_ have been some factor in his increasing movement away 
from 2-way untraceability and towards his later favored scheme of 
"Joe Sixpack" being untraceable/anonymous to Fred Merchant, but not 
vice versa. Of course, in a distributed ("geodesic"--RAH) system of 
buyers and sellers, there is no particular distinction between buyers 
and sellers: all are traders.

And Chaum was NOT thinking clearly about why even a _seller_ might 
"legitimately" want untraceability: a seller of birth control 
information, for example. Absent "seller anonymity," such a seller 
could face sting operations by Saudi Arabian cops. Witness the 
controversy over sellers of "Nazi artifacts," pace Yahoo and France.

>
>Free and open assassination markets are a messy thing. True, some good
>would come out of them. A whole bunch of bad would come out of them as
>well.
>
>Just because you can do something, does not mean that you should.

Indeed. And neither you nor I are likely to operate or participate in 
such markets.

But some people already DO participate in assassination markets. 
Happens every day. Some are caught, some are not. Governments are 
active players in this market, by the way.

Strong crypto will make the liquidation market...more liquid.


--Tim May
-- 
(This .sig file has not been significantly changed since 1992. As the
election debacle unfolds, it is time to prepare a new one. Stay tuned.)