Re: Untraceable Payments, Extortion, and Other Bad Things

["Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net>]

By the way, I was gone last week, and missed some of the follow-ups to this
thread. I did notice in Omegaman's replies that he was replying to
Detwweiler's wailings about "Timmy." (What's with Detweiler and Vulis both
being so hung up on such a nickname? If it makes them feel they're winning
converts, let them call me "Timmy." Jeesh.)

At 6:21 PM -0600 12/29/96, Omegaman wrote:

>But criminals are often a stupid and foolish lot.  Many will be caught at
>the "nexus" of physical action due to their own ineptitude.  I can envision
>several such instances occurring where it is publicized that these were
>contract (killings,extortions,kidnappings) in which the individual was to be
>paid in Bank of Albani digital cash.

Sure, but my interest is in the possible, not the dumb mistakes of dumb
people. That some criminals will screw up and reveal their identities is no
different from the similar possibility that some people will mess up in
using remailers; doesn't alter the interesting properties of remailer
networks.

>This publicity and subsequent public outrage result in many corporations and
>institutions seizing the moral high ground (and a little good publicity
>which could result in more revenue, of course)  and advocating/enforcing a
>ban on usage of bank of Albania digital bux.

Perhaps. But I note that various "outrages" associated with use of Swiss
banks--Jewish gold deposits, banana republic deposits, tax avoidance,
etc.--have not exactly driven Swiss and similar banks out of existence.
Greed is a powerful lubricant. And there are of course various ways to make
the traffic less obvious.

>> Ed takes the crypto credits and redeems them as he sees fit (after some
>> unblinding stuff, of course). The redemption order is unlinkable to the
>> extortion.
>
>True, but if Bank of Albania digital cash is not accepted as a method of
>payment, what good does this do Ed?  No one will change them because they
>are largely worthless.

Ed can of course redeem his Bank of Albania digibux at the Bank of Albania,
if worst came to worst and somehow the Bank of Albania was "frozen out" of
the banking community (see below for why this is effectively impossible).
Go to Tiraz, present the digibux numbers, take payment in paper dollars,
gold coins, whatever.

And, more importantly, the "doubly untraceable" nature of true Chaumian
e-cash means that the Bank of Albania _cannot_ be frozen out of the banking
system (assuming other banks are also issuing Chaumian cash). Any mechanism
that would allow the Bank of Botswana, for example, to "know" that the Bank
of Albania was buying untraceable Botswanabux would of course mean the
Botswanabux were not untraceable! Once Bank of Albania can buy such
untraceable currency, they can pay Ed off in them. Or variants of this.
(The similarity of a network of Chaumian digicash banks to a network of
remailers is obvious...indeed, Chaum's work on "digital mixes" preceeded
his work on digital cash, 1981 vs. 1985.)



...
>Of course not.  But unless untraceable digital cash becomes a ubiquitous and
>widely used form, it will not be useful for these "bad things" (or any other
>purpose
>
>As always, the key is deployment of an untraceable, anonymouse form of
>digital cash now.  Wide usage is part of the key to legitimization.  Right
>now the government is frantically attempting to marginalize the idea of
>fully untraceable digicash with all sorts of four-horsemen publicity.
>
>If everybody's already using it, they'll be far less likely to switch to a
>new digicash-escrow alternative.

Well, I agree with all of these points. They want deployment halted, or at
least slowed.

--Tim May


Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside"
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."