Re: FinCEN hates cybercash, who 'da thunk it...

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

At 3:47 pm -0500 2/6/97, Duncan Frissell wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>
>>But Stanley Morris of the United States Treasury, who chaired a FAFT
>>working group which drafted the report, told a news conference that
>>law enforcement agencies would face 'very major new challenges' if new
>>technology moves the world "to a cashless society, beyond banks, cash
>>and borders."
>
>Oh No!  First they told us that they were all in favor of a cashless society
>because they could track all the transactions.  It was their Orwellian
>Dream.  Now Nirvana has almost arrived and they're afraid of it.  Can't
>they make up their minds?
>
>I noticed the problem long about 1975 when I noticed that the spread of
>ATM cards was actually the spread of a bearer instrument and would
>not satisfy the control needs of the regulatory types.

In a geodesic network, any node which tries to process all the traffic
chokes. The network then routes, to paraphrase Gilmore, around it. :-).

I remember this pravda chart at CFP a year ago, where FinCEN was
"demonstrating" (in a chart with no Y-axis) their "increased supervisory
load" due to the exponentiating use of point to point electronic
transaction settlement.

Be careful whatcha wish for fellas. An old Texas A&M Aggie joke about a
poor monkey trying to put the cork back into a pig's butt comes to mind...

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"Never attribute to conspiracy what can be
explained by stupidity." -- Jerry Pournelle
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/rah/
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