Strategic Invest. on Bad Boys, Blk Net, & Remailers

[gjeffers@socketis.net (Gary Jeffers)]

from:        Strategic Investment
             824 East Baltimore Street
             Baltimore, MD 21202

                      July 25, 1995
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                     BEHIND THE LINES   BY  Jack Wheeler

                         BAD GUYS

   Let's suppose, "just suppose," that the president has
placed you in
charge of a super-secret spy agency conducting electronic
intelligence,
the National Security Agency; and suppose that he ordered
you to trace
the activities of those who have replaced the Communists as
official
"Bad Guys," "Enemies of the State:" tax evaders, money
launderers, and
drug traffickers. So you decide to pull one of the great
intelligence
coups of modern times, by having the NSA become a major
provider of
banking software.

   Working through a cutout company skilled in managing
money in support
of U.S. covert operations, and using a modified version of
sophisticated
tracking software provided by the Justice Department's
intelligence
service (OSI, Office of Special Investigations), you sell
your product
to financial institutions around the globe - not telling
them, of course,
that what they're buying has an electronic "backdoor" giving
the NSA
computerized access to the intimate details of their
customers' financial
transactions. In less than a decade, your client list
includes many of
the world's leading banks.

   The banks behind the Visa smart card for the Atlanta
Olympics, and
those soon to offer Internet banking are your clients too.
Yes, now
you'll do your patriotic duty and get the Bad Guys - and
anyone else you
decide is an Enemy of the State.

   We're just suppposing, you understand.

                     THE BLACK NET

   A worldwide communications system, accessible to anyone
on the Inter-
net, of completely anonymous and unbreakable encrypted
messages and
transactions: That's the vision of the Black Net being
created by
"crypto-anarchist" computer programmers. Using programs like
"MixMaster"
and anonymous re-mailer computer servers that nest encryted
messages in
encrypted envelopes, the Black Net will defeat the NSA's
ability to trace
communications to their source via traffic analysis or any
other method.
Black Net banks could offer totally untraceable and
anonymous transact-
tions with the identity of the account holder unknown even
to the bank-
- rendering any attempts, such as those imagined above, to
get the Bad
Guys useless. As economist Richard Rahn puts it: "The
information tech-
nology of the 80s (cheap faxes & photocopiers, satellite
radio, etc.)
doomed an government's attempt to have a monopoly on the
supply of money."
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Beat State!