At 12:00 PM -0800 3/7/00, Stefan Brands wrote:
...
>You are right in case the design would be *limiting* the functionality
>of the system without there being a need. Here, though, we are choosing
>from one of two different functionalities that cannot be achieved at
>the same time. The market might just as well punish your decision of
>building the remote extortion possibility into the design -- in fact,
>consumers may prefer not to adopt it in light of this risk. Is that
>worthwhile to you?
[I'm using the Chaumian language of "blinding" and "unblinding."]
Alice kidnaps Bob, the son of Clarice.
Alice sends a message (untraceably, of course) to Clarice, instrucing her
to arrange a transfer (by opening an account if necessary) of a million
truly untraceable digibucks via untraceable means of course. Alice then
unblinds the digibucks and does with them as she wishes.
This works AS LONG AS THERE EVEN _ONE_ TRULY UNTRACEABLE SYSTEM. If even a
single bank, or a single jurisdiction, supports this, the game is up. Alice
tells Clarice to hop a place to Libya or the Caymans or whatever. Or even
to use informal banks.
It doesn't matter if her local bank doesn't support this, if she herself
does not have such an account, etc. If necessary, she'll hop a plane to
ANYPLACE that offers such a technology.
(Which is really not much different from today's situation, where savvy
kidnappers can demand payment in countries lacking extensive Interpol
presence. And lacking pliable banking officers. True, most kidnappers and
extortionists, at least those who are caught, are stuck in the conventional
thought mode and use only domestic banks and transfers.)
But there are more elegant solutions.
Alice could demand that Clarice use a "payer untraceable only" transaction
to purchase a reverse payment from another party, or merchant, or whatever.
(This goes by various names: money changing, making "change," promissary
notes, etc.)
So Clarice contacts Dave, pays him 1.1 million digibucks, Dave then pays
Clarice (or Alice, same difference, really) 1.0 million digibucks.
If any party is worried about being burned, they can break the transactions
up into smaller pieces and sequentially verify each one. (And of course
neither Dave nor his bank have any reason to burn Clarice or Alice.)
Payer untraceable cash plus payer untraceable cash in the other direction
becomes mutually untraceable cash. How else could it be?
So long as money is just another thing to buy, one can buy money.
There is also every reason to expect that some "banks" will operate with no
traceability to a physical locale. Cf. data havens. Given payer-untraceable
digital cash, a money exchange ("bank") operating with even the primitive
protocols of BlackNet would work.
--Tim May
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
"Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.
