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
- 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
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]
