Is Chaum's System Traceable or Untraceable?

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

At 6:35 PM 5/17/96, jim bell wrote:
>At 10:09 AM 5/16/96 +0200, bryce@digicash.com wrote:

>>Let me get this straight.  You are asking for full payee/payor
>>anonymity so that you can institute a program of anonymous
>>assassination contracts, right?
>
>It's not just for me.  I seem to recall a comment around here (Tim May,
>perhaps?) who said that when he first read of digital cash in the late
>1980's, the feature of payee anonymity was present, and that he was
>surprised later to see early implementations not containing this.

Yes, this was I (or "me").

I first read of Chaum's work in late '85, in his CACM article, and then
"rediscovered" it when I was doing some review work for Phil Salin's AMIX
information market startup in 1987.

Certainly the text of Chaum's articles implied both payer and payee
anonymity, though certain details may've been unclear to some of us.

When Chaum unveiled his "payer is anonymous, but payee is traceable," some
of us were surprised.

(On the other hand, I have had a longstanding faith that the system can be
made to be both payer- and payee-anonymous. Moneychangers, for example.)

>Deal with the devil?
>
>Any "complete" digital cash implementation has to provide for payee anonymity.
>

I agree with Jim Bell on this completely. I don't know if Chaum has been
seduced by the Dark Side, or is looking to get digicash widely deployed by
"respectable" institutions, or is telling the truth (that his system
_never_ provided for real untraceability), but I know that Cypherpunks
should always strive for full untraceability.

One-sided traceability is not enough.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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