The AntiCash

[Duncan Frissell <frissell@panix.com>]

To: cypherpunks@toad.com

T >Does this system provide _any_ protection against fine-granularity
T >monitoring of payer identity? 

Most current phone card systems allow the cards to be purchased for cash. 
 The French VISA electronic purse smartcard assumes an account 
relationship with the bank as does the Nat West Monex system proposed for 
the UK.

T >Scary Scenario: This could be the vehicle for the long-rumored
T >"banning of cash." (Just because conspiracy theorists and Number of
T >the Beast Xtian fundamentalists belive it doesn't render it
T >implausible.)

Since none of the proposed systems involve physiologic identification, 
they could function as cash just by giving the card+pin to someone else.  
Depends on what you have to do to refill them.  Can they be refilled from 
any account or only from one account.  Is it economic to just throw 
them away when empty.  The Monex system allows two "purses" to make an 
exchange without an intermediate device.  More cashlike.

Since in America, today, one can obtain a (secured) VISA card in a nome de 
guerre, use phone cards bought for cash, and (soon) use VISA's own 
"electronic traveller's cheques" ( basically a throw away VISA card), I 
don't see vast privacy problems with these forms of payment. 

T >Make no mistake, this is not the digital cash that Cypherpunks
T >espouse. This gives the credit agencies and the government (the two
T >work hand in hand) complete traceability of all purchases, automatic
T >reporting of spending patterns, target lists for those who frequent
T >about-to-be-outlawed businesses, and invasive surveillance of all
T >inter-personal economic transactions.
T >
T >This is the AntiCash.
T >
T >Beware the Number of the AntiCash.
T >
T >
T >--Tim May

Time for one of my screeds on why it doesn't matter.

"Jim" our tame FBI agent at CFP '94 said that the FBI did 500 wiretaps 
(that they'll admit to) and one datatap in 1993.  He said that they can 
only find someone willing to do about one datatap a year because it takes 
an incredible amount of time to go through the logs and there's rarely 
anything interesting.

(Pause while hundreds scream that they will be able to deploy fabulous AI 
programs to scan everything and arrest everyone and convict everyone and 
throw everyone in jail.>

1)  They don't have the fabulous AI programs yet.

2)  AI programs can't bust anyone until Robocop arrives on the scene and 
Robocop can't (easily) bust people outside of the jurisdiction.

3)  If you run AI software against something as complex as human society, 
you get loads of hits.  So you tighten your parameters until you only get 
the number of hits that you can handle.

4)  The feds can only investigate, bust, convict and imprison a 
comparatively few people a year.  (The US couldn't even pull off a decent 
version of The Holocoust these days.  It would cost too much.  WACO was 80 
some odd dead and it must have cost the feds $millions.)

5)  AI programs *can* be used to "punish" people by withdrawing government 
"benefits" automatically from miscreants.  This is a form of "punishment" 
that we can favor because it adds to the pool of those living independent 
lives.

6)  Communication itself is the most dangerous activity driven by modern 
technology and it is very hard to outlaw.  Communication=trade=society. 

7>  Communication leads to dangerous economic and social changes like 
action at a distance, multiplication of entities, and the ability to 
homestead new "space" in territory unclaimed (because uncreated) by any 
national state.  These are generally not illegal, however.

8)  Peasants bound to the soil have very few "communications sessions."  
They are restricted to just a few options in life yet Machiavelli had to 
write a whole book about the challenges involved in ruling a society in 
which 95% of the population was stuck in place.

9)  In a few years, 2-3 billion people will be wired and capable of scores 
of transactions/day with other people/entities anywhere on earth.  Who 
will/can control that volume of transactions.

10) As artificial entities/agents proliferate, it seems likely that the 
"average institutional size" (natural persons per organization) will be 
*less* than 1.  If I deploy 7 software "agents"....

11) Market Earth (and the "Cybermarches" that will be its constituent 
parts) is too complex to rule.

Duncan Frissell
   

"We're going to free you sons of bitches whether you want to be freed or 
not."


--- WinQwk 2.0b#1165