Underestimating long-term consequences of cryptoanarchy

[Tim May]

On Sunday, May 11, 2003, at 12:22  AM, Bill Stewart wrote:
>
> Last time I played a government lottery, I didn't win the green suit 
> and guns
> or the two-year vacation in exciting tropical Southeast Asia.
> Didn't even win the third-prize government-health-care physical.
> Ain't planning to play again.

I played the California Lotto game once, shortly after it started 
(mid-80s, as I recall). I wanted to see what the tickets looked like 
and whether in fact there was a hash (or other variant of crypto) on 
the back, as I had heard there was. Yep, for a dollar I confirmed this. 
I lost the losing ticket amongst my stuff many years ago.

(The idea is an obvious one to our crowd. Suppose the winning number is 
"foobar," in some likely base. Any clod who hears this is the winning 
number can then use a good printer and make his own winning ticket, or 
so he thinks. But only the "mint" is able to generate the _other_ 
number, call it "foobaz,"  which is either a hash with a secret key of 
"foobar" or is otherwise computed from "foobar." John Koza, the genetic 
programming guy at Stanford who has authored several books on the 
subject, started a Gilroy-based company called Scientific Games, which 
did a lot of the work on lotteries and their tickets. Now they own 
several other betting companies. Koza sold out at least 15 years ago 
and concentrated on genetic programming (which has nothing to do with 
Scientific Games or lottery tickets).)


--Tim May
"The Constitution is a radical document...it is the job of the 
government to rein in people's rights." --President William J. Clinton