[CLUE-Talk] The Advance of the Surveillance Society

[David Anselmi]

Jed S. Baer wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Jul 2002 21:17:07 -0600
> David Anselmi <anselmi at americanisp.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Jed S. Baer wrote:
>>
>>>Well, apparently any financial transactions other than cash,
>>>person-to-person, have no protection under the 4th ammendment.
>>>
>>>http://my.sybase.com/detail?id=1019355
>>
>>IIRC, the technical issues for digital cash have been solved.  Sadly it 
>>seems to have fewer peripheral revenue streams than things like credit 
>>cards so I'm not sure how we go about getting it to be widely used. 
>>Maybe Matt Gushee can use it in his local economy boosting.
> 
> 
> Well, Dave, depending upon whom you ask, the digital cash issues aren't in
> as good a shape as the purveyors of those systems would have us believe.
> Everything I've read about the issues of security WRT digital cash depend
> upon PKI - Public Key Infrastructure. Digital identity is of course, a key
> component as well, and such systems also use PKI. After reading the
> following paper from Counterpane Labs, I'm uncertain anyone can say the
> problems are solved.  http://www.counterpane.com/pki-risks.html
> (Ellison/Schneier)

Well, I said the technical issues were solved meaning that a usable 
digital cash protocol and the supporting algorithms were available.  I 
still think that is true.  Yes, I could be wrong.

The digital cash protocols described in "Applied Cryptography" seem only 
to require signatures by the issuing bank.  The consumer is anonymous 
and so does not need a public key.  So, even if bank signatures require 
a PKI, it is more limited than one that supports signatures by everyone 
in the world.  That would seem to make the risks more manageable.

Also, the risks in your counterpane link seem to be largely procedural 
not technical.  (By my above definition.  Certainly non-programmers 
might consider everything on that page to be technical.)

[...]

> The issue which is of more concern to me (in this context) however, would
> be that I suspect digital cash would fall under the same provisions of
> USAPA, for "know your customer and their source of funds". Wouldn't a
> "repository" managing digital cash be the essential equivalent of a bank,
> or, similar to PayPal, be a transfer agent? Unless you're talking about a
> Bermuda company, perhaps.
> 
> I was actually thinking about the same issues WRT to a LETS.
> 
>>From the Sybase paper: "... the Act requires that all depository financial
> institutions and broker dealers must know the true identity of their
> customers and the source of their funds".

Hmmm.  That seems to indicate that person-to-person cash transactions 
would be included, at least in some cases, which is not what you said 
originally.  In any case, I think this is a road best untravelled.

Without reading the entire paper, nor the Act, this seems similar to 
what I've always believed (without verification) about large cash 
transactions.  My understanding is that withdrawing more than $10k from 
a bank or buying something (like a car) for more than $10k cash requires 
paperwork be submitted to the IRS as a way to trace illegal activities. 
  If you withdraw $10k and spend $10k, no problem.  If either half of 
the equation is missing, red flag.

So I've always been tempted to buy a car in cash.  Just give the bank 
and the dealership notice and demand that the transactions be performed 
conveniently.  If everyone did that, I think the extra overhead would 
drive business to lobby for a change in the law.  Even more so than 
above, I could be wrong.

Dave