Re: Forgery, bills, and the Four Horsemen (Articles and Comment)

At 23:44 9/4/95, Black Unicorn wrote:
[...]

>3.  The corruption of e-cash to further the above.
>
>If the government is disturbed by the laundering of money enough
>to actually print, or even propose printing, two kinds of
>currency, how will they respond to untraceable, unaccountable and
>infinitely liquid e-cash?  I think the answer is in past behavior:
>e-cash will be linked to the four horsemen and subjected to
>rigorous reporting requirements- systems which are true e-cash
>will be banned.

This is unnecessary, since there is no "true" ecash. DigiCash's ecash in
its current form, the only version David Chaum is willing to licenese, is
fully traceable. Popular Cypherpunk's myths nonwithstanding.

First, the recipient of funds is non-anonymous by design. Second, any payer
can trivialy make the recipient of a ecash note known by revealing the
blinding factor. For purposed of lawenforcement, DigiCash's ecash in no
more secure than if the (insert horseman here) billed his fees to a credit
card.


-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.

On Tue, 5 Sep 1995, Lucky Green wrote:

> Date: Tue, 5 Sep 1995 12:45:44 -0800
> From: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
> To: Black Unicorn <unicorn@access.digex.net>, cypherpunks@toad.com
> Subject: Re: Forgery, bills, and the Four Horsemen (Articles and Comment)
> 
> At 23:44 9/4/95, Black Unicorn wrote:
> [...]
> 
> >3.  The corruption of e-cash to further the above.
> >
> >If the government is disturbed by the laundering of money enough
> >to actually print, or even propose printing, two kinds of
> >currency, how will they respond to untraceable, unaccountable and
> >infinitely liquid e-cash?  I think the answer is in past behavior:
> >e-cash will be linked to the four horsemen and subjected to
> >rigorous reporting requirements- systems which are true e-cash
> >will be banned.
> 
> This is unnecessary, since there is no "true" ecash. DigiCash's ecash in
> its current form, the only version David Chaum is willing to licenese, is
> fully traceable. Popular Cypherpunk's myths nonwithstanding.

Perhaps true, but this assumes that the Chaum method is the only method, 
which I believe to be incorrect.  Perhaps I should use the term "future 
e-cash models" or "True Digital Cash."

Currently there is no "true" e-cash implemented (as far as I know), but 
this is part of the problem.

The product introduced to the public, the original market release
will be (is) traceable, why should the public expect anything different?  In
addition this is exactly what I was talking about in deterring the use of
"real" e-cash.  Real e-cash will be seen as an anomoly, a perversion of e-cash 
to make it sneaky for the four horsemen (or that's how I would play it to 
the public were I a statist).

> 
> First, the recipient of funds is non-anonymous by design. Second, any payer
> can trivialy make the recipient of a ecash note known by revealing the
> blinding factor. For purposed of lawenforcement, DigiCash's ecash in no
> more secure than if the (insert horseman here) billed his fees to a credit
> card.
> 

Again, one more reason that "real" e-cash will be banned.  The public 
doesn't need it as an alternative is widely available.

This is the curse (or gift) of crippleware- its use as a diversion.
See also, Clipper

> -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
>    PGP encrypted mail preferred.

---
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E16D5378B81E1C96 quaere verum ad infinitum, loquitur sub rosa    -    wichtig!
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com> wrote:
> 
> This is unnecessary, since there is no "true" ecash. DigiCash's ecash in
> its current form, the only version David Chaum is willing to licenese, is
> fully traceable. Popular Cypherpunk's myths nonwithstanding.
> 
> First, the recipient of funds is non-anonymous by design. Second, any payer
> can trivialy make the recipient of a ecash note known by revealing the
> blinding factor. For purposed of lawenforcement, DigiCash's ecash in no
> more secure than if the (insert horseman here) billed his fees to a credit
> card.


I'm sorry-- what do you mean by "the recipient of funds is non-anonymous"?  
I cannot envision any centralized currency system in which a user's funds
were *not* known to the bank!


Secondly, there is a tremendous difference between a person being able to
identify you as the recipient of their money (which they can pretty much do
anyway, with less surety, just by saying "That's him!  He's the one I gave
it to!") and a third party such as the bank or a government being able to
monitor all your transactions.  For such an organization to perform that feat
on a DigiCash user they would need the cooperation of all of the people with
whom he exchanges currency, and if they have that, then cryptography seems
irrelevant.  :-)


I hope I'm not missing anything here.


Regards,

Bryce

signatures follow:


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

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