Re: An article for Wired magazine

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> First of all, digital money can take various forms.  Existence on a hard 
> drive is one of those forms.  But, it is also possible to have digital money 
> on a card-based platform. Mondex in the UK currently has official government 
> units of account digitally represented for their Mondex card trial in 
> Swindon.  They have also announced that in the future this card will hold up 
> to five "official" currencies.  Furthermore, they make no secret about the 
> fact that this digital money is ideally suited to transfer on the Net.  Visa 
> and Mastercard are both working on stored-value cards which will also 
> digitize official currencies.  CyberCash has also announced plans for an 
> electronic token which will most likely represent an official currency.  
> Others will announce soon.


I'd like to go on record as stating that all of these other systems pretty
much suck.  Mondex, for example, actually stores non-crypto messages of the
type "Hi there I represent one hundred Belgian crowns" in its cards, so if
you can hack the "front-door" security (possibly with physical hacking of the
card) and convince a Mondex card that your PC is another Mondex card you can
transfer infinite money to it.  (Well, I suppose you wouldn't be able to
transfer more than 2^64 units of currency or some such limit, but you get the
idea.)


Contrast this with DigiCash's scheme in which each cyberbuck is
cryptographically unforgeable.


Most of the other companies have similarly weak security.  Many of them are
not offering any new technology at all, but are simply offering to transport
your credit card number for you, encrypted, over the net.


Furthermore none of DigiCash's competitors, as far as I have been able to
learn, offer any kind of anonymity the way DigiCash does.  The closest they
come is "confidentiality".  Yeah-- right.  I can get the same offer from the
Ministry of Truth.


Finally, be aware that e-cash can be put onto a smart card just as well as
on a magentic disk.  DigiCash is actually in the process of developing and/or 
marketing smart cards that hold such things as toll token for toll roads and
civic credits for coffee houses in Europe.  See their home page for more
detailed (and probably more accurate) info.


Source of facts behind these opinions:  Perusing the web pages of the
principals.


 DigiCash home page http://www.digicash.com/
 FIRST VIRTUAL Holdings Incorporated http://www.fv.com/
 Mondex Home Page http://www.mondex.com/mondex/home.htm
 CyberCash, Inc. Home Page http://www.cybercash.com/
 CommerceNet Home http://www.commerce.net/
 RSA Data Security, Inc.'s Home Page http://www.rsa.com/
 Net1 Home Page http://www.netchex.com/
 Electronic Commerce http://www.zurich.ibm.ch/Technology/Security/extern/ecommerce/
 The NetCheque(SM) system http://nii-server.isi.edu:80/info/NetCheque/
 NetMarket Homepage http://netmarket.com/nm/pages/home
 Downtown Anywhere - Front Street http://www.awa.com/
 Internet Shopping Network http://www.internet.net/
 Cash, Tokens, etc on NII http://www.cnri.reston.va.us:3000/XIWT/documents/dig_cash_doc/ToC.html
 NetBill Project Home Page http://www.ini.cmu.edu/netbill/
 NetMarket Homepage http://netmarket.com/nm/pages/home
 NexusBucks http://www.c2.org/nexbucks/
 Economics and the Internet http://gopher.econ.lsa.umich.edu/EconInternet.html
 Security First Network Bank, FSB http://www.sfnb.com/
 Commerce on the Internet http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/credit.html
 A History of Money http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/llyfr.html
 Wenbo Mao's Presentation http://www.hpl.hp.co.uk/projects/vishnu/main.html
 Internet Casinos http://www.casino.org/" ADD_DATE="801367759
 The E-cash Market http://www.c2.org/~mark/ecash/ecash.html

  

> Stand-by though:  governments and central banks will do everything in their
> power to discourage and prevent this for the power to issue and coin money is
> one of THE most cherished privileges of the Crown !


...and it seems like the first step that they are taking is sanctioning 
inferior, less secure, privacy-decreasing technologies over DigiCash's superior
alternative.


And so it goes...


Bryce
signatures follow:


                                 +                                           
    public key on keyservers     /.       island Life in a chaos sea         
    or via finger 0x617c6db9     /             bryce.wilcox@colorado.edu     
                                 ---*                                     

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta

iQCVAwUBMC+gSPWZSllhfG25AQHe+gQAhiPQ8GN+cg4Q6lLe6c8UQovOVN301lop
tAthnw7qbLDY/dKItCy9AzImDGn2WFTwx3i+nouWbDSWwGUw0Zlc6ajdRlCviX9a
BihtvGJaaujxv13ERI6jjmmfkvbctDfqUrDvrgjQB/0kOhSxt5VTkA2tNdzGiEK9
4EA3f+0Cah0=
=cJy2
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> Furthermore none of DigiCash's competitors, as far as I have been able to
> learn, offer any kind of anonymity the way DigiCash does.  The closest they
> come is "confidentiality".  Yeah-- right.  I can get the same offer from the
> Ministry of Truth.

True. On the other hand, many of these other companies are actually doing
commerce Right This Minute. As a vendor, my primary interest is availability.

Digicash stands to lose out in the marketplace. Why? Because you can't
actually buy and sell real goods for real cash right now. One day,
sure, but not now. By the time they deploy their system, consumers who
aren't as concerned, or knowledgeable, as cypherpunks will have made
some other system the market leader.

Chilling thought. I hope DC can get a backing bank sometime soon.

- -Paul

- -- 
Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG       | Do you support free speech? Even when
perobich@ingr.com            | you don't like what's being said?
		 Be a cryptography user. Ask me how.


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2

iQCVAwUBMC+taqfb4pLe9tolAQE0igP/bAT0EidHjONMjmjXmy5AZLCKzj3TM1U0
qPIZR72noaL6YeUQKig9u9DLRe3tSMz9sobSqZuOguapiTP/ZhusoaOVUwxsdgQe
SWtJwgIaMzESZr1lWihUyCopvKiHZmlyCX/3pnpKyubWcCa2lNn9crgzkof1BgVV
vIw6S16waSU=
=00jq
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

> True. On the other hand, many of these other companies are actually doing
> commerce Right This Minute. As a vendor, my primary interest is availability.


I understand what you mean, although *my* primary interest is 
techno-enthusiasm and near-future sociological speculation.  :-)


> Digicash stands to lose out in the marketplace. Why? Because you can't
> actually buy and sell real goods for real cash right now. One day,
> sure, but not now. By the time they deploy their system, consumers who
> aren't as concerned, or knowledgeable, as cypherpunks will have made
> some other system the market leader.


I'm afraid these words will turn out to be prophetic.  On the other hand, the
nature of this market is such that the industry leadership can turn-over
quickly.  I expect that the factor which has the most inertia in this game is
consumer mind-share.  The other factors-- capital, technology, skilled labor,
publicity-- can all be quickly gained by any aggressive new start-up that
wants them.


> Chilling thought. I hope DC can get a backing bank sometime soon.


According to Steven Levy (in his Wired mag story on David Chaum), Chaum
refuses to make deals with companies that would cut corners on his privacy
provisions.  I don't know how accurate that story is, but if it is true it
would explain why DigiCash is the technological leader and the marketplace 
dark horse.


(Hm.  "DC" -- "DigiCash" -- "David Chaum".  I just noticed that...)


Bryce
signatures follow:


                                 +                                           
    public key on keyservers     /.       island Life in a chaos sea         
    or via finger 0x617c6db9     /             bryce.wilcox@colorado.edu     
                                 ---*                                     

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.2
Comment: Auto-signed with Bryce's Auto-PGP v1.0beta

iQCVAwUBMC+3wvWZSllhfG25AQGjQgP/dhMWwEEPasttIs/RvkNFA6qRUS9A/7F2
96QvWhA9vetBq97LmwWZxluxw8VgPUoJyltX+eVOHt+JCeDy36rxOhcMe2hH1Z8B
qGZUcwpZ8IUIxkq43SQ0M+MqWyEWRn/0c9vNxu39o7CnOQWIZPfjdSp0CtRdjmu2
E0ypPAFV73c=
=uynK
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

I'm less worried about the annonymity aspect than the security aspect. The 
reported Mondex approach is less than impressive. 

The major problem with DigiCash is the patent portfollio. I don't much like the 
idea of David Chaum replacing the government as the controller of the money 
supply. Sorry, I just don't.

The problem with Chaum's work is that it is unbalanced. He considers only the 
privacy aspect. The prevention of extortion aspect he does not consider. 
DigiCash have never addressed the baby-napping protocol problem as far as I am 
aware.

Governments have certain rights in our society that individuals do not. This is 
justified by their being democratically accountable. I don't think we should 
readily agree to surrender those rights. Do you want the world of the future to 
be controlled by Bill Gates, Ted Turner and David Chaum?

hallam@w3.org writes:
> The problem with Chaum's work is that it is unbalanced. He considers
> only the privacy aspect. The prevention of extortion aspect he does
> not consider.  DigiCash have never addressed the baby-napping
> protocol problem as far as I am aware.

DigiCash as defined makes it trivial to trace cash you give to someone
provided there is collusion between the payer and the bank. Doesn't
that solve the baby-napping problem?

Incidently, so far as I know, there is no physical world way to solve
the babynapping problem. Hell, you can just demand a case with five
kilos of gold in it if $50,000 in cash doesn't suit your tastes. I
defy governments to eliminate gold as well as paper currency.

> Governments have certain rights in our society that individuals do
> not. This is justified by their being democratically accountable.

Lets not get into a polititical discussion, but many of us here would
deny the legitimacy of authoritarianism simply on the basis that a
majority of the tiny minority that votes decided to vote for it.

.pm

P Hallam wrote:

| The major problem with DigiCash is the patent portfollio. I don't
| much like the idea of David Chaum replacing the government as the
| controller of the money supply. Sorry, I just don't.

	Remember that the patents only last 17 years.  (A few more,
since some of the major ones are staggered, but not a long time.
Governments tend to last longer than that.)



-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume