[67973] in Cypherpunks
Re: Blinded Identities [was Re: exporting signatures only/CAPI]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (jim bell)
Sun Oct 13 18:48:20 1996
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 1996 15:12:30 -0800
To: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin@law.miami.edu>,
Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Cc: cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
At 04:28 PM 10/13/96 -0400, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote:
>It is unpublished, but he kindly allowed to me describe it in a paper I
>wrote that discussed whether a bank would ever want to take the risk of
>allowing bank accounts where it did not know the identity of the customer.
Why should that be a problem? It's the customer's money, isn't it? It's
not like the bank is making a loan. It's the customer who should be
worried...about the bank's identity.
Remember "plausible denial." Shouldn't we believe that if a bank cannot
know its customer, likewise it isn't responsible for who that customer is?
A bank's legitimate interests should not include acting as enforcer for the
government, so any system that prevents this from happening is helpful.
And I don't think that a bank can ever be embarrassed (assuming bank
accounts are anonymous) by it being revealed that some particular bad guy
kept his money there, any more than other cash-based (anonymous) businesses
are embarrassed if it is revealed that some bad guy used their services.
Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com
