Stopping the buying of candidates

At 09:24 AM 10/17/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
>
>There are several swirling threads about the development of crypto systems
>(e.g., "binding cryptography," "key recovery," "one-way traceable e-cash")
>that are designed to allow law enforcement some ability to track illegal
>transactions, catch some criminals, etc.

One of the other items on my wish-list (short of a more, uh, "permanent" 
solution to politics) is a system to actually enforce the anonymity of 
political donations.  What I mean is this:  As bad as a large political 
contribution is, what's worse is that the candidate who receives it knows 
who it is from, and how large it is, etc.  Given the recent flap over the 
Indonesian donations to the DNC, it seems to me that it would actually clean 
up politics if there were a mechanism to collect donations, blind them and 
send them to the proper candidate, but hide the actual source of that money. 
 Hide it from the candidates, not necessarily the anyone else. 

This may sound difficult.  After all, it will be argued that a given 
contributor will want to take credit for a donation and tell those who 
receive it; one way to help avoid this is the assess huge penalities (say, 
10 times the value of the contribution claimed) to the party or candidate 
who is told of the source of a contribution but does not report the breach 
of security.  The system could be set up to actually encourage people to 
test it and report fraud, and perhaps be awarded anonymously for providing 
evidence of misbehavior; and people should be able to (falsely) claim credit 
for donations, at least to the candidates themselves.  

Any donation reported to a candidate must be declared by the candidate and 
is then lost; their motivation for reporting it is that it'll be lost 10x if 
they don't.  

The result should be that the candidates should have no idea where the money is 
actually coming from, only that they are getting it.  The contributors 
should be able to verify (via some sort of encrypted-open-books system) that 
the money they donate is actually being credited to the candidates, but they 
should not be able to use this system to prove to the candidate they made 
the contribution.

I really wish those people who are developing that "binding cryptography" 
proposal would change their minds and decide to work on a proposal such as 
this, one that might actually help fix the political money problem.


Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com

There would seem to be serious First Amendment problems with this scheme.

If you wanted to give or withhold support, you should able to say that 
you did or didn't donate money. Besides, interest groups would always be 
able to telegraph the news of the donation -- while the public remains 
in the dark. It may be better for the public to have full disclosure.

-Declan


On Mon, 21 Oct 1996, jim bell wrote:

> At 09:24 AM 10/17/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:
> >
> >There are several swirling threads about the development of crypto systems
> >(e.g., "binding cryptography," "key recovery," "one-way traceable e-cash")
> >that are designed to allow law enforcement some ability to track illegal
> >transactions, catch some criminals, etc.
> 
> One of the other items on my wish-list (short of a more, uh, "permanent" 
> solution to politics) is a system to actually enforce the anonymity of 
> political donations.  What I mean is this:  As bad as a large political 
> contribution is, what's worse is that the candidate who receives it knows 
> who it is from, and how large it is, etc.  Given the recent flap over the 
> Indonesian donations to the DNC, it seems to me that it would actually clean 
> up politics if there were a mechanism to collect donations, blind them and 
> send them to the proper candidate, but hide the actual source of that money. 
>  Hide it from the candidates, not necessarily the anyone else. 

// declan@eff.org // I do not represent the EFF // declan@well.com //

At 8:13 PM -0700 10/22/96, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>There would seem to be serious First Amendment problems with this scheme.
>
>If you wanted to give or withhold support, you should able to say that
>you did or didn't donate money. Besides, interest groups would always be
>able to telegraph the news of the donation -- while the public remains
>in the dark. It may be better for the public to have full disclosure.

As I see it, there are also "serious First Amendment problems" with "full
disclosure." Or with the closely-related campaign spending limits.

If we support anonymous leafletting, anonymous speech, and just about
anonymous _anything_, why should we accept that the State can compell who
spent money in support of a candidate?

Our political system is already in thrall to various special interests;
this is the nature of our overly-democratic system. So be it. Let the
highest bidder buy the government he can.

--Tim May

"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM
that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology."
[NYT, 1996-10-02]
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."