Re: Kid Gloves or Megaphones

[eric@remailer.net (Eric Hughes)]

   Date: Thu, 14 Mar 1996 10:18:27 -0800
   From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>

   So while I admire Eric's ethical concern about making relevant
   information about the properties of ecash available, it is also important
   to understand the possible outcome.

My concern is not ethical, although upon re-examining what I said I
can see how that might appear that way.  My concern is entirely
pragmatic.  Disclosure is the ethical act, true, but in this case the
ethicality is performative, it is the active principle itself.  The
issue is one of legitimacy and the epistemology of a group.  Telling
the truth is not just a morally good idea, it is a pragmatically
useful one.

If we do not disclose what we know now, _regardless_ of the immediate
outcome, we will lose in the end.  If we lose now, we will never have
been able to win at all.  The debate which must be taken to the public
is whether we want payee anonymity or not.  I am confident that people
want their privacy and are willing to let others have theirs as well.
If they do not, the world is not as I understand it, and I have some
hard thinking to do.

   One thing I notice that was missing from Eric's posting was a description
   or reference to exactly how the payee anonymity is achieved.  Is it his
   intention to tell people that it is possible, yet to keep secret how it
   is done?

I didn't invent it.  I'm going to let Ian describe it when and how he
wants.

Eric