Pricing Mojo, Integrating PGP, TAZ, and D.C. Cypherpunks

[measl at mfn.org]

Isn't this a description of Hawala?

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001, dmolnar wrote:

> On 21 Nov 2001, Anonymous wrote:
> 
> > Supposing you and others were willing to pay Nomen a modest sum for this
> > service, how could you do so using Paypal or Amazon, and allow him to
> > retain his anonymity?
> 
> On the off chance that this isn't rhetorical, because at least one way of
> doing this seems straightforward...
> 
> Some guy with a true name good enough to sign up for PayPal gets an
> account, publishes a public key, and acts as a human "cash remailer."
> Well, several people do, actually, and then we run a "payment MIX." Some
> anonymous poster brought up the idea about a year ago IIRC and attributed
> it to Ron Rivest. It sparked a short discussion which went into questions
> of whether such an operation might run afoul of money laundering laws and
> then sort of petered out. Or maybe I just stopped reading.
> 
> To spell it out, Nomen offers to do the service and picks an incoming
> payment MIX plus a chain of MIXes. (N.B.: will use MIX to refer to a
> member of the chain).  Publishes a "payment reply block" which has the
> incoming payment MIX PayPal address in clear, plus a block encrypted with
> the payment MIX's public key. The encrypted portion has the PayPal address
> of the next MIX in the chain, plus an encrypted portion for that next MIX.
> Eventually it decrypts to reveal Nomen's real PayPal account info.
> Assuming everyone plays along, the money flows down the chain and ends up
> in Nomen's PayPal account. I expect that's not such a great assumption
> when dealing with "real" money.
> 
> You still have the BlackNet problem, though - Nomen1 and Nomen2 can both
> publish public payment blocks. Which one do you pay? In this particular
> case, though, you can address that (and the fair exchange problem) by
> doing what Stephen King did -- Nomen does a little bit of the work first
> for free, then continues iff enough people ante up for more. You use the
> payment block signed by the same key which signed the current work.
> 
> Now that I think about it, you could probably take this down the route
> Eric Hughes suggested in his "Universal Piracy Network" presentation at
> DEF CON IV. That is, people pay Nomen and in return Nomen sends them the
> new work first; they get 0-day access to the warezzz. Hughes had something
> about "completion bonds" in his presentation as well, but I don't remember
> at all what the particulars were, just that there was a rough analogy to
> the movie industry. Anyone remember more details?
> 
> I have half a mind to sign up for PayPal just to try this. (Assuming I
> won't be thrown in jail for money laundering, anyway). Anyone with me?
> 
> Nomen? :)
> 
> Although I feel compelled to point out that with only one MIX, it's not
> going to be particularly secure for Nomen. Not to mention with no
> provision for detecting MIXes who shave off the payment or eat it
> entirely, this might just be me trying to make a few quick $$$. Of course
> if this were large-scale, you could use reputations -- a MIX which eats
> the entire $$$ now loses out on the possibility of shaving small fractions
> of $$$ later.
> 
> Also, with provision for detecting MIXes who give good payments, there's
> nothing to stop Nomen from alleging that I'm screwing him and ruining my
> reputation. As a potential MIX, that bothers me. So there are issues here.
> 
> >
> > An alternative solution is barter.  Nomen could agree to search certain
> > years of archives, or certain topics, in exchange for other people working
> > on other parts of the project, for example.  Information barter can be
> > performed while retaining anonymity.  Maybe systems to facilitate barter
> > could be developed if anonymous cash remains out of reach.
> 
> right, like the barter a Nomen is trying to do with Marc right now...and
> which doesn't seem to be working too well so far. Although in that case it
> seems like the problem was just that this Nomen set up the terms of the
> barter without bothering to ask if the other party actually wanted to
> trade. That's like this guy at Coney Island I met a few months back.
> 
> "You wanna throw a dart?? Here! Here! Free!"
> <throw two darts>
> "Now you owe me five dollar!"
> 
> (I paid. Yes, I'm a wuss. I got a cute fan out of it. I'm never doing
> business like that at Coney Island ever again.)
> 
> -David
> 
> 

-- 
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org

If Governments really want us to behave like civilized human beings, they
should give serious consideration towards setting a better example:
Ruling by force, rather than consensus; the unrestrained application of
unjust laws (which the victim-populations were never allowed input on in
the first place); the State policy of justice only for the rich and 
elected; the intentional abuse and occassionally destruction of entire
populations merely to distract an already apathetic and numb electorate...
This type of demogoguery must surely wipe out the fascist United States
as surely as it wiped out the fascist Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The views expressed here are mine, and NOT those of my employers,
associates, or others.  Besides, if it *were* the opinion of all of
those people, I doubt there would be a problem to bitch about in the
first place...
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