On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 06:40:08PM -0000, lcs Mixmaster Remailer wrote:
> Payee traceability had nothing to do with it.  Every customer of MTB,
> whether an end user or a merchant, had to fully identify himself to the
> bank, including SSN and for merchants, type of business, etc.  This is
> SOP for other payment systems like credit cards.
> 
> It was on this basis that MTB was able to screen their merchants.
> No payee tracing was necessary.  A fully untraceable cash system would
> have been equally amenable to merchant screening.  Any vendor has the
> right to control whom it does business with, and MTB chose to exercise
> its discretion in this way.

I don't know if MTB had a lot of discretion - banks are subject to the
federal "know your customer" regulations. You can't get depositor
anonymity from a bank chartered in the US, at least not without at least
one level of corporate indirection (e.g., the bank "knows its customer"
who is a domestic or foreign closely-held corp, who does the bidding of
its unidentified-to-the-bank-and-FINCEN shareholders). 

> The Texas couple in the news recently made a different choice and
> decided to provide payment services for child pornographers, as James
> Donald recommends.  Now MTB is still in business (after merging with
> MTL and then FSR) and the Texans are in jail.  Which made a better choice?

Sounds like the Texans knew too much about their customers - if they
operated a content-neutral service which had many, many customers,
one of whom happened to be a child-porn service, they'd be doing fine,
especially if they shut off the child porn people if/when notified by
law enforcement of the activity. Does the FBI shut down AOL and Earthlink
when their subscribers traffic in child porn? 

--
Greg Broiles [EMAIL PROTECTED]
PO Box 897
Oakland CA 94604

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