Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
Steve suggested (see below) that anonymous cash may be useful to hide the identities of contributors from the party/candidate they contribute to. I'm afraid this won't work: e-cash protocols are not trying to prevent a `covert channel` between the payer and payee, e.g. via the choice of random numbers or amounts. Furthermore even if the e-cash system had such a feature, it would be of little help, since (a) there will be plenty of other ways the payer can convince the payee that it made the contribution and (b) in reality, candidates will have to return the favors even without knowing for sure they got the money - kind of `risk management` - I'm not sure what we want is to allow big contributors to gain favors while not really making as big a contribution as they promised... Best, Amir Herzberg At 10:11 08/09/2003 -0700, Steve Schear wrote: Everyone knows that money is the life blood of politics. The topic of campaign finance reform in the U.S. has been on and off the front burner of the major media, for decades. Although the ability of citizens and corporations to support the candidates and parties of their choice can be a positive political force, the ability of political contributors to buy access and influence legislation is probably the major source of governmental corruption. Despite some, apparently, honest efforts at limiting these legal payoffs there has been little real progress. The challenge is to encourage "neutral" campaign contributions. Perhaps technology could lend a hand. One of the features of Chaimian digital cash is unlinkability. Normally, this has been viewed from the perspective of the payer and payee not wishing to be linked to a transaction. But it also follows that that the payee can be prevented from learning the identity of the payee even if they wished. Since the final payee in politics is either the candidate or the party, this lack of knowledge could make it much more difficult for the money to be involved in influence peddling and quid pro quo back room deals. By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore entitled to special treatment. Comments? steve A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored by judges and demagogue statesmen. - Steve Schear - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
- Original Message - From: "Steve Schear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform > At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote: > >- Original Message - > >From: "Steve Schear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >[anonymous funding of politicians] > > > Comments? > > > >Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll > >recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." > >Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any > >transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came > >from, but no one can prove it. > > Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of > payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately > others/many might take weeks to arrive. You act like they aren't already used to addressing that "problem." I'll go back to the Bustamante, simply because it is convenient right now. Bustamante recieved a multi-million dollar donation from the Native Americans, this was not done through a single check, that would be illegal, instead it was done through multiple smaller checks, each of which ends up randomized and delayed in processing (USPS is wonderful source of randomness), so the actual occurance of the donations is scattered acros several days, from several accounts, by several people, and I'm sure Bustamante never even looked to see who the donations were actually from, just that the full amount arrived. The "problem" that you found, is already addressed, and already not a problem. Joe Trust Laboratories Changing Software Development http://www.trustlaboratories.com - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
At 04:51 PM 9/8/2003 -0700, Joseph Ashwood wrote: - Original Message - From: "Steve Schear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [anonymous funding of politicians] > Comments? Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it. Not so fast. I said the mix would delay and randomize the arrival of payments. So, some of the contributions would arrive almost immediately others/many might take weeks to arrive. steve "...for every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
Steve - The whole thing is a crock, and the problems aren't technical. None of the proposed users of the system have any desire to use it, except perhaps as a front for other activities, and the people who'd want them to make them use it are just meddlers. It's funny how any time you bring up the First Amendment in the context of tobacco advertising or internet pornography, they say "Oh, no, it's not about that, it's about *political* speech", but if you bring it up in the context of actual political speech, well then, oh, no, the First Amendment is about not arresting ranters on soapboxes in the park, or letting people print newspapers as long as there's official identifying information about the printer, but it's *certainly* not about actually letting people fund *electoral* speech, because elections are *way* too important to let unapproved members of the *public* influence the outcomes The couple of papers that Michael Froomkin referenced are pretty much the canonical references to the approach you're talking about, but just because there are academics proposing it doesn't mean it isn't still a total crock. Now, if you're talking about *real* campaign finance reform, as in permitting people to engage in free speech even if it requires money to transmit that speech to their intended recipients, fully anonymous digital cash is useful for that, in the obvious ways, and payer-anonymous payee-disclosing digital cash has its uses as well, if you like to be able to trace the people you're paying, and anonymous and pseudonymous publishing are also obviously useful, and then of course there's Blacknet if you want the real info on candidates. You don't need 100% technical guarantees of anonymity for most political work; the public can usually guess that "Paid for by Californians for Motherhood and Apple Pie" is probably the prison guards' union, or the major opponent of the candidate that the negative TV ad was about, or whatever, but unless there's a lawsuit or actual investigative reporter, nobody's going to bother tracking them down. Unfortunately, softmoney.com got snapped up a few years ago; I'd been planning to set it up as a site for donating your two cents to John McCain, when he was ranting about banning it. "paid for by Californians Against Bogus Campaign Financing Regulations, John Doe #238, Treasurer" - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
- Original Message - From: "Steve Schear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [anonymous funding of politicians] > Comments? Simple attack: Bob talks to soon to be bought politician. "Tomorrow you'll recieve a donation of $50k, you'll know where it came from." Next day, buyer makes 500 $100 donations (remember you can't link him to any transaction), 50k arrives through the mix. Politician knows where it came from, but no one can prove it. By implementing this we'll see a backwards trend. It will be harder to prove the buyout (actually impossible), but the involved parties will know exactly who did the paying. Right now you can actually see a similar usage in the Bustamante (spelling?) campaign in the California Recall Election, the Native Americans donated $2M to him in spite of a limit of ~22k by donating from several people. Same method only now we know who did the paying. Joe Trust Laboratories Changing Software Development http://www.trustlaboratories.com - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
Steve Schear wrote: > By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the > size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized > delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to > the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which > would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and > parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore > entitled to special treatment. How would you audit such a system? I'm not that up on political cash, but I would have expected that there would be a need to figure out where money was coming from, by some interested third party at least. Also there would be a need to prove that the funds were getting there, otherwise, I'd be the first to jump in there and run the mix. Or, the mint. iang - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Digital cash and campaign finance reform
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=60331 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=272787 http://www.cfp2000.org/papers/franklin.pdf http://www.yale.edu/yup/books/092628.htm On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > Everyone knows that money is the life blood of politics. The topic of > campaign finance reform in the U.S. has been on and off the front burner of > the major media, for decades. Although the ability of citizens and > corporations to support the candidates and parties of their choice can be a > positive political force, the ability of political contributors to buy > access and influence legislation is probably the major source of > governmental corruption. Despite some, apparently, honest efforts at > limiting these legal payoffs there has been little real progress. The > challenge is to encourage "neutral" campaign contributions. Perhaps > technology could lend a hand. > > One of the features of Chaimian digital cash is unlinkability. Normally, > this has been viewed from the perspective of the payer and payee not > wishing to be linked to a transaction. But it also follows that that the > payee can be prevented from learning the identity of the payee even if they > wished. Since the final payee in politics is either the candidate or the > party, this lack of knowledge could make it much more difficult for the > money to be involved in influence peddling and quid pro quo back room deals. > > By combining a mandated digital cash system for contributions, a cap on the > size of each individual contribution (perhaps as small as $100), randomized > delays (perhaps up to a few weeks) in the "posting" of each transaction to > the account of the counter party, it could create mix conditions which > would thwart the ability of contributors to easily convince candidates and > parties that they were the source of particular funds and therefore > entitled to special treatment. > > Comments? > > steve > > > A foolish Constitutional inconsistency is the hobgoblin of freedom, adored > by judges and demagogue statesmen. > - Steve Schear > > > - > The Cryptography Mailing List > Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > -- Please visit http://www.icannwatch.org A. Michael Froomkin |Professor of Law| [EMAIL PROTECTED] U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA +1 (305) 284-4285 | +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) | http://www.law.tm -->It's very hot here.<-- - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
