The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot

[Reese]

At 16:00 8/27/2001 -0500, Aimee Farr wrote:
 >Tim May:
 >
 >> So I guess my candidate submission for the P.E.T. workshop might not be
 >> well-received: "BlackNet; Case History of a Practically Untraceable
 >> System for Buying and Selling Corporate and National Secrets.
 >
 >No, you want E.E.T. -- "Espionage-enhancing Technologies."

<...>

 >Section 1831 Economic espionage

<...>

 >This is not legal advice. It's an obituary. :)

Owning a vehicle that will exceed the speed limit is not a crime.
Driving a vehicle that will exceed the speed limit is not a crime.
Exceeding the speed limit is a crime and is a ticketable offense,
at the least.

Mechanisms to maintain privacy and anonymity are no different, use of
those same mechanisms to commit crime is not a death knell for those
mechanisms just as manufacturers do not stop producing and selling
vehicles that are capable of exceeding the speed limit, even though
some people do speed and are ticketed or given warnings, at least.

You are entirely too smug and happy, at the thought of these various
mechanisms useful for preserving privacy and anonymity going the way
of the dodo.  Tim may be correct, in his assessment on your deserving
what you receive.

 >> think of people selling their expertise when some guild says they are
 >> forbidden to.
 >
 >I talked about this before, as an OSINT channel for the U.S. Government.
 >
 >o BlackNet has legitimate intelligence applications.

It also has legitimate applicability for Joe Sixpack and Suzy Winecooler,
who don't want a zillion ads and cookies clogging their bandwidth and
cache, who don't want targetted ads or their surfing habits tracked and
monitored, who certainly don't want their health insurance premiums to
go up after they do research on some rare, incurable disease they are
mildly curious about or after researching a more common ailment when a
friend happens to be diagnosed - to lean on those old standbys.

 >o Anonymity can be a problem. You need authentication. You would like
 >blinded biometrics.

The maintenance of privacy can be a problem, from a marketers POV, other
things can be viewed as problems too, when the end consumer has proper
control of self-identifying information.  If the money is good, that
level of authentication can be conducted in meatspace if it is truly
needed - most times, it is not.

 >o I would think the ROI would be where you can shoehorn into existing
 >intelligence channels and groundwork. That's either a sovereign, an
 >intermediary wrapped in the skirts of a sovereign, a defense contractor,
 >or an untouchable intermediary. If not bona-fide intelligence, you're
 >left with the criminal element, IRA and so forth.

You leave many possible things out, you present a false summation of all
the possible uses of Blacknet and maintenance of anonymity.

 >Most move product and still have
 >distribution channels. Yeah, the IRA would like digital cash, they are
 >buying arms with offshore debit cards.

This event by people acting criminally in another country (according to
the rules imposed by past-rulers of that other country, heh) should be
used to shape and mold US domestic policy and legislation for the care
and feeding of US citizen-units how, exactly?

 >o It seems like _damn bad timing_ for a discussion in this context.

Bad timing?  Who is disadvantaged by the timing of this discussion?
Your handler said to slow the conversation down while they run some
numbers and gets some surveillance in place, or something?

 >This should be couched in terms of a beneficial application, rather
 >than something subversive.

Principle is like that.  You don't like what others have to say?  You
should remove your own right to freedom of speech, before you attempt
to censor others.  (Good luck, once you've effectively removed your own
right to free speech, on censoring anyone else).

As a lawyer, you know or should know that most (if not all) of the most
significant constitutional rights cases to be heard by the courts have
involved criminals and other undesirables and unlikelies who pushed the
edge of the envelope in their own defense.  Just because I have a dislike
for Charles Manson, does not mean I support movements to suspend all the
rights affirmed under the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and other of the
various Amendments we collectively refer to as the Bill of Rights, for
example.

 >It's like the fall of Knights Templar in
 >here. What happened to the pilgrims' safe passage?

When it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it
probably isn't a pilgrim.

Reese