CDR: Re: Re: Jim Bell arrested, documents online

Ken Brown k.brown at ccs.bbk.ac.uk
Mon Nov 27 09:44:28 PST 2000


Greg Newby wrote:

> If a bunch of crypto anarchists or whoever decide to knock off
> Bill Gates or Al Gore (who really didn't invent the Internet
> well enough...), you can bet someone will come looking pretty hard!

Would AP be the main criminal use of robust crypto & Hettinga's pet
geodesic market?

If  there was widespread use of a truly anonymous, untraceable, reliable
way of sending large amounts of easily usable cash  to people with whom
one has no physical connection  (I mean every single one of those 7 or 8
qualifiers) what crime would flourish?

Murder? But there is plenty of that already. And it involves physical
contact  Even if most private individuals didn't follow the AP market
(were one to develop) you can bet that spooks and insurance companies
would (*) & likely victims would becme better defended.

Tax evasion? Of course. But in the hypothetical cryptocash future
everybody will be doing it. Income tax evasion will cease to be
considered a crime. States will move away from transaction taxes back to
property taxes (which they probably ought to do anyway, but haven't yet,
for obvious reasons).

Pornography? Already happening. But, it will probably become effectively
free, like all the other software. Not a huge profit to be made in the
long run, not when anywone will be able to download as much as they want
from anywhere.

Kidnapping? At the moment the weak point in a kidnapping is getting the
money in. You have to give away your location, and you have to pick up a
physical, traceable, object. If ransoms could be paid untraceably,
expect kidnappings to increase to Colombian levels world-wide.  Of
course the kidnappers need to establish a trust that the prisoner will
be released if the ransom is paid, but that is the way things are
already anyway - which is why reasonably large organisations, or ones
with some political credibility, specialise in it. You might not believe
a ransom demand from CMOT Dibbler Esquire, of Bread Lane, but you pay
attention if it was (digitally certifiably) from ETA or the provisional
IRA, or LTTE, or various Colombian herbal suppliers.

Ken (not happy with this idea at all...)


(*) talking of which, an opinion poll in the UK found that the thing
that most worried people about genetic technology was their insurance
companies getting hold of data on them. That scored lower down than
biological warfare - only 8% or respondents thought tht insurers should
have access to such information. I have no idea how slanted the question
was.





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