credibility & pseudonyms

I have this persistent image of what a great boon all these
encrypted networks will be for undercover work. Currently when
some species of cop or spy goes undercover they take on a nearly
full time acting job. They have to work for a long time to
establish their credentials and throughout the process are usually
in significant physical danger. I vaguely remember (the details are
probably wrong) some Isreali spy got as far as the position of Minister
of Defense in Jordan before he got hung.

With digital signatures a dozen secretaries could run a hundred or more
pseudoagents, build a solid reputation for each over years.

The same approach would work for a patient con man. 

Real credibility has to be tied to a physical body. Some thing
at risk.

--efrem

The same approach would work for a patient con man. 

	 Real credibility has to be tied to a physical body. Some thing
	 at risk.

Real credibility has to be tied to assets.  The credibility is
equivalent to the amount of assets at risk.  In a positive reputation
system, the asset is reputation capital, it is the respect granted by
others.  It embodied in the settings of their sorters that order your
messages before those of other people.

In the farther-out world of nanotech with duplicate bodies and
backups, having a body at risk is worthless because bodies would be
cheap :-)

If the operators of an escrow service are anonymous, then either their
accessible assets had better be enough that you can recover losses if
they walk with your goods, or their opportunity cost of defecting on
their clients had better be high enough (in terms of lost revenue,
lost opportunity on outstanding customer goodwill, name recognition,
channels, etc.) that they are sufficiently unlikely to that you will
take the risk.  Scary prospect, and one which many people will
estimate wrongly, so the simplest strategy would be to only use escrow
companies with an accessible person responsible for them.

dean