NODE 2c8858d1Re: Hettinga's e$yllogism
Secret Squirrel <nobody@secret.squirrel.owl.de>Wed, 25 Jun 1997 02:17:29 +0800
>1. Government has copy of keys
>2. Government misuses keys.
>
>Simple enough for you?
Too simple. Escrow for ecash isn't to allow forging cash, or stealing it.
It allows tracing it.
If you tell financial experts that making ecash traceable under court order is
goint to make electronic commerce impossible, they'll laugh. They already
use systems which are even less private than that.
Anon
NODE e0894d7fRe: Hettinga's e$yllogism
Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>Wed, 25 Jun 1997 04:04:00 +0800
At 1:52 pm -0400 on 6/24/97, Secret Squirrel wrote:
> If you tell financial experts that making ecash traceable under court
>order is
> goint to make electronic commerce impossible, they'll laugh. They already
> use systems which are even less private than that.
That's because, like all industrial transaction processes, they're built to
run weak transactions on strong, but private networks. The internet enables
strong transactions on weak, but public networks, which are way cheaper.
Again, *Digital* Commerce *is* Financial Cryptography.
Cheers,
Bob Hettinga
-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/