geographically removed?

[Steve Furlong]

On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 21:44, James A. Donald wrote:
>     --
> On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
> > Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always
> > be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch.
> 
> You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled,
> determined, disciplined, and united.  Observed police states
> are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome.
> 
> > This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems.
> 
> The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system
> gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters.   We have a long way to
> go before police states are the problem.

Heh. When the stasi come a-callin' tell them they'll have to wait
because you've got bigger problems. Wonder how well that would work?

I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for
fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make
use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi-
ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness,
and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate.
The sellers pay the intermediary, who takes a piece of the action to act
basically as an insurer of the vendor's good faith. If there's a problem
with the service or merchandise and the vendor won't make good, the
intermediary is responsible for making the buyer whole. Is there some
reason this wouldn't work? If not, why hasn't anyone tried it yet? Not
enough cash flow to make it worth their while?

* There's a proper word for "trusted intermediaries" in this context,
but hanged if I can remember it.