> On Sat, 4 Mar 2000, Jim Choate wrote:
>
>> Anonymous mailer operaters can most definitely be considered to
> be 'doing
>> anything' if it is found they're in the loop of a criminal
> investigation.
>
> Yes. This is why I think it is important that even the senders of
> anonymous mail not be able to prove after message delivery that a
> particular message went through a particular remailer. Preferably
> not be able to prove, ever, but you can always seize the entire remailer
> chain and follow the message step by step.
>
>
> > Why would any of the payment mix operators be 'doing anything'
> other than
> > the entry and exit points? All the data would be encrypted and
> unreadable
> > to all the intermediary machines. In an ideal world even the entry and
> > exit points should only receive encrypted (and therefor anonymous)
> > traffic.
>
> I was under the impression that payment mixes were to be built on top of
> existing, non-anonymous payment schemes. That is, if we have a chain of
> payments mix servers Alice-Bob-Carol --- Yeltsin-Zelda, each of them
> has an account whose activity is tracked by some bank.
>
> The payments made between Alice and Bob, or Bob and Carol, and so on,
> can be audited by the bank. Now, the bank may not have access to the
> instructions which tell Bob to send $X to Carol (this is the encrypted
> data you're writing about) -- but he will see that Bob receives lots
> of money and then forwards lots of that money onwards. This will
> raise suspicion for Bob; I don't know money laundering laws well
> enough to
> say if it is actually illegal.
"Knowingly concealing or attempting to conceal the proceeds of a crime" is a
concept that is a good start.
> Does anyone know of a good survey/introduction of money laundering laws?
The real bite of money laundering regulation is in avoiding or attempting to
avoid the various reporting requirements employed to combat money
laundering.
The best real introduction to this is the actual US Code.
TITLE 18 - CRIMES AND CRIMINAL PROCEDURE
PART I - CRIMES
CHAPTER 95 - RACKETEERING
Laundering of monetary instruments
(a)(1) Whoever, knowing that the property involved in a financial
transaction represents the proceeds of some form of unlawful
activity, conducts or attempts to conduct such a financial
transaction which in fact involves the proceeds of specified
unlawful activity -
(A)(i) with the intent to promote the carrying on of specified
unlawful activity; or
(ii) with intent to engage in conduct constituting a violation
of section 7201 or 7206 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986; or
(B) knowing that the transaction is designed in whole or in
part -
(i) to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the
source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of
specified unlawful activity; or
(ii) to avoid a transaction reporting requirement under State
or Federal law,
shall be sentenced to a fine of not more than $500,000 or twice the
value of the property involved in the transaction, whichever is
greater, or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both.
(18 USC Sec. 1956)
The problem for mixing digital cash is not going to come from those
provisions of federal law (i.e. the criminal sanctions) but rather the civil
forfeiture provisions.
Sec. 981. Civil forfeiture
(a)(1) Except as provided in paragraph (2), the following
property is subject to forfeiture to the United States:
(A) Any property, real or personal, involved in a transaction
or attempted transaction in violation of section 5313(a) or
5324(a) of title 31, or of section 1956 or 1957 of this title, or
any property traceable to such property.
(Section 5313 is: RECORDS AND REPORTS ON MONETARY INSTRUMENTS TRANSACTIONS)
Drop some tainted money into the mix and the entire operation will get
frozen and seized until the authorities can sort matters out (read: years).
By the way, there's no interest when (if) you get seized funds, computers,
network, etc. back.
