Re: Anguilla...etc.

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

At 2:21 AM 8/14/96, Greg Kucharo wrote:
>  While Tim may be right that nobility is lost when backing down to the
>authorities, the fact is that this game has little to do with noble
>purposes.  Check that, obvious noble purposes.  While most on this list
>would agree that free flow of information is noble we have all seen that
>this is otherwise with people in power.  As I stated in my last post, the
>Swiss have maintained thier "haven" for many years by playing both sides.
>In accomodating everyone they avoid harassment.
>   This way the Swiss maintain a good system and live to fight another day.

Let me be clear that I am not talking about "noble motives." In the sense
of somone sacrificing himself for the good of the herd, blah blah.

Rather, there is an "archetype," if you will, of what a "remailer" is, what
a "data haven" is, what a "tax shelter" is, etc. While we cannot reasonably
expect a remailer to exactly match the archetype, we can point out obvious
deficiencies.

For "data havens," we have very few examples, compared to operational
remailers. We have the fictional form in Bruce Sterling's "Islands in the
Net," some of whose plot twists have some parallels to the current Anguilla
situation. Another is the form described in Ross Anderson's "Eternity
Service."

What might we expect of a true data haven? I've tried to describe several
of the attributes in my earlier posts, mainly by asking questions about
specific examples (bomb-building instructions, "Kill the monarchy" screeds,
etc.).

Interestingly, with several of these examples, Vince has said that he is
not interested in having this kind of material on his site. His invitation
for Multi-Level Marketers to avoid U.S. and other laws by locating on his
service has now been withdrawn, from his latest comments. (To the person
who sent me mail explaining that MLM schemes are not illegal in the U.S.,
indeed, some are legal and some are not. I said as much. And for those
which are legal in the U.S. or France or wherever, they would hardly have
any need to use Vince's service, would they? I surmised from his invitation
that he was encouraging MLM/pyramid scheme operators to avoid their
parochial fraud laws and use the services in Anguilla.)

I plan to do more looking at just who is left, who is using Offshore
Information and what kinds of services they are offering. Not to harass
Vince, of course, but to better look at the envelope of what is considered
OK and what is not.

If i find that all the "juicy" stuff is gone and all that is left is
booking sailing cruises around the Carribbean, I'll hardly call it a "data
haven." Which is not to say it's not still a useful and profitable business
for Vince, just that it has no Cypherpunk relevance.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we 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,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."