Digital cash and campaign finance reform

Tim May timcmay at got.net
Tue Sep 9 09:28:46 PDT 2003


On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 08:39  PM, Steve Schear wrote:

> At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote:
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Steve Schear" <s.schear at comcast.net>
>> To: <cypherpunks at lne.com>; <cryptography at metzdowd.com>
>> [anonymous funding of politicians]
>> > Comments?
>>
>> Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow 
>> you'll
>> recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from."
>> Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him 
>> to any
>> transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it 
>> came
>> from, but no one can prove it.
>
> Not so fast.  I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of 
> payments.  So, some of the contributions would arrive almost 
> immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive.
>

Why are you not addressing the more direct attack, the one I described 
yesterday?

"The contributions you receive for $87.93 came from our members."

Unless the amounts are consolidated by a third party or dithered (so 
much for digital money being what it claims to be), this covert channel 
bypasses the nominal name-stripping.


--Tim May

"According to the FBI, there's a new wrinkle in prostitution: suburban 
teenage girls are now selling their white asses at the mall to make 
money to spend at the mall.
...
Now, you see, the joke here, of course, is on White America, which 
always felt superior to blacks, and showed that with their feet, moving 
out of urban areas. "White flight," they called it. Whites feared 
blacks. They feared if they raised their kids around blacks, the blacks 
would turn their daughters and prostitutes. And now, through the 
miracle of MTV, damned if it didn't work out that way! "

--Bill Maher, "Real Time with Bill Maher," HBO, 15 August 2003





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