[79266] in Cypherpunks
Re: New Article on Financial Cryptography
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kent Crispin)
Tue Apr 29 16:22:39 1997
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 12:26:51 -0700
From: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
To: "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com>
Cc: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>, cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Reply-To: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
On Mon, Apr 28, 1997 at 09:30:13PM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote:
>In <19970428151650.02893@bywater.songbird.com>, on 04/28/97 at 04:16 PM,
> Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said:
>
>>Which negates any advantage of anonymity for cash.
>
>BULL-SHIT!
I was refering to your purchase of the 'vette -- presuming the dealer
followed the law, the sale would be reported, and the amount, and
hence the transaction is not anonymous, even though you paid cash...
>I guess that if live were you are required to look over your shoulder as
>you walk down the street this may be a problem. I don't know as I work too
>hard to live in a slum.
>
>I routinly carry several $100's in my pocket at any given moment and don't
>give it a second thought. My biggest fear is that some LEA will roust me
>for the cash claiming that it is "drug money" never to be seen again.
>
>Worst case is that some dirtbag will hold me up. As he is walking away I
>will promptly pop a couple of caps in his ass, walk over retrieve my money
>and go home. :)
The worse case is that the dirtbag will put his own 45 slug between
your ears, retrieve the money from your wallet (since you won't need
it anymore), and go home. Since the dirtbag does this for a living,
and I presume you do not, he's probably better at it than you.
[Here's another opening for macho posturing, should you need it :-)]
[...]
>>The choice the end consumer faces is *not* "privacy vs non-privacy". It
>>is much more complex -- one has to balance the value of maintaining
>>transaction data private against a higher probability of financial damage.
>
>Do you have anything to support this claim? I have seen nothing presented
>to favor one risk over the other.
>
>IMHO this is *NOT* a complex issue. Most issues are quite simple including
>this one. In an anonymous based system one still has the option of being
>non-anonymous if one choses to do so while in a system that does not allow
>anonymidity you have no choice. That's seems pretty simple to me. The rest
>is just smoke and mirrors to cloud the issue.
Pretty simple, all right.
>>Completely anonymous/private transactions have a hidden cost, the cost of
>>fraud. It would be interesting (but difficult) to know the level of
>>transaction fraud in illegal transactions such as sale of illegal drugs.
>
><sigh> wrong again. :( Just ask any CC exec. how much fraud is involved in
>their non-anonymous, non-private system. It's up in the billions
>(million-million for you britt's) of dollars per year. Ofcource they are
>able to recoup some of this loss by selling detailed records of you
>purchasing habbits to any piece of shit with a couple of bucks to spend.
No, they don't lose money at all. They make money, fraud and all --
the interest charges much more than cover the losses due to fraud.
>As far as transaction fraud in the illegal drug trade, these are handled
>quite quickly and quite brutally. Those foolish enough to do so generally
>don't live very long to spend their ill gotten gains. :)
Oh sure. Drug kingpins are models of integrity. They would *never*
cheat a small guy. Drug users are *always* intelligent aware adults
making informed lifestyle choices. There is *never* any form of
coercion involved.
Don't get me wrong -- I strongly favor legalization of drugs. But
macho fantasies about the characteristics of the drug trade are just
that, fantasies.
--
Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
