Re: E-Gold
At 8:55 PM -0800 3/30/02, Tim May wrote: I've seen no convincing arguments from the E-gold enthusiasts that E-gold is anything more than magical thinking. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe E-gold has ever claimed anonymity. But as a bailee, which is what they do advertise being, E-gold works well. Regards, Matt- ** Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues Send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words subscribe FA on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week) Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722 ICQ: 106212065 Archived at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/ **
IMF/IRS/US, The truth must come out eventually...
Any comments? 1. The IRS is not a U.S. Government Agency. It is an Agency of the IMF. (Diversified Metal Products v. IRS et al. CV-93-405E-EJE U.S.D.C.D.I., Public Law 94-564, Senate Report 94-1148 pg. 5967, Reorganization Plan No. 26, Public Law 102-391.) 2. The IMF is an Agency of the UN. (Blacks Law Dictionary 6th Ed. Pg. 816) 3. The U.S. Has not had a Treasury since 1921. (41 Stat. Ch.214 pg. 654) 4. The U.S. Treasury is now the IMF. (Presidential Documents Volume 29-No.4 pg. 113, 22 U.S.C. 285-288) 5. The United States does not have any employees because there is no longer a United States. No more reorganizations. After over 200 years of operating under bankruptcy its finally over. (Executive Order 12803) Do not personate one of the creditors or share holders or you will go to Prison.18 U.S.C. 914 6. The FCC, CIA, FBI, NASA and all of the other alphabet gangs were never part of the United States government. Even though the ^US Government^ held shares of stock in the various Agencies. (U.S. V. Strang , 254 US 491, Lewis v. US, 680 F.2d, 1239) 7. Social Security Numbers are issued by the UN through the IMF. The Application for a Social Security Number is the SS5 form. The Department of the Treasury (IMF) issues the SS5 not the Social Security Administration. The new SS5 forms do not state who or what publishes them, the earlier SS5 forms state that they are Department of the Treasury forms. You can get a copy of the SS5 you filled out by sending form SSA-L996 to the SS Administration. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 422.103 (b) (2) (2) Read the cites above) 8. There are no Judicial courts in America and there has not been since 1789. Judges do not enforce Statutes and Codes. Executive Administrators enforce Statutes and Codes. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428, 1 Stat. 138-178) 9. There have not been any Judges in America since 1789. There have just been Administrators. (FRC v. GE 281 US 464, Keller v. PE 261 US 428 1Stat. 138-178) 10. According to the GATT you must have a Social Security number. House Report (103-826) 11. We have One World Government, One World Law and a One World Monetary System. (Get the Disks) 12. The UN is a One World Super Government. (Get the Disks) 13. No one on this planet has ever been free. This planet is a Slave Colony. There has always been a One World Government. It is just that now it is much better organized and has changed its name as of 1945 to the United Nations. (Get the Disks) 14. New York City is defined in the Federal Regulations as the United Nations. Rudolph Gulliani stated on C-Span that New York City was the capital of the World and he was correct. (20 CFR chapter 111, subpart B 422.103 (b) (2) (2) 15. Social Security is not insurance or a contract, nor is there a Trust Fund. (Helvering v. Davis 301 US 619, Steward Co. V. Davis 301 US 548.) 16. Your Social Security check comes directly from the IMF which is an Agency of the UN. (Look at it if you receive one. It should have written on the top left United States Treasury.) 17. You own no property, slaves can^t own property. Read the Deed to the property that you think is yours. You are listed as a Tenant. (Senate Document 43, 73rd Congress 1st Session) 18. The most powerful court in America is not the United States Supreme Court but, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. (42 Pa.C.S.A. 502) 19. The Revolutionary War was a fraud. See (22, 23 and 24) 20. The King of England financially backed both sides of the Revolutionary war. (Treaty at Versailles July 16, 1782, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80) 21. You can not use the Constitution to defend yourself because you are not a party to it. (Padelford Fay Co. v. The Mayor and Alderman of The City of Savannah 14 Georgia 438, 520) 22. America is a British Colony. (THE UNITED STATES IS A CORPORATION, NOT A LAND MASS AND IT EXISTED BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR AND THE BRITISH TROOPS DID NOT LEAVE UNTIL 1796.) Respublica v. Sweers 1 Dallas 43, Treaty of Commerce 8 Stat 116, The Society for Propagating the Gospel, c. V. New Haven 8 Wheat 464, Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80, IRS Publication 6209, Articles of Association October 20, 1774.) 23. Britain is owned by the Vatican. (Treaty of 1213) 24. The Pope can abolish any law in the United States. (Elements of Ecclesiastical Law Vol.1 53-54) 25. A 1040 form is for tribute paid to Britain. (IRS Publication 6209) 26. The Pope claims to own the entire planet through the laws of conquest and discovery. (Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493) 27. The Pope has ordered the genocide and enslavement of millions of people.(Papal Bulls of 1455 and 1493) 28. The Popes laws are obligatory on everyone. (Bened. XIV., De Syn. Dioec, lib, ix., c. vii., n. 4. Prati, 1844)(Syllabus, prop 28, 29, 44) 29. We are slaves and own absolutely nothing not even what we think are our children.(Tillman v. Roberts 108 So. 62, Van Koten v. Van Koten 154 N.E. 146, Senate Document 43 73rd Congress 1st Session, Wynehammer v. People 13
RE: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Trei, Peter wrote: So, yes, at the moment they can't scan your wallet very easily. But this technology is developing as all others are. I don't know about dealing with many similar tags more or less simultaneously, but some of the discussed apps for stock tracking require dealing with this problem. The tags are passive. All tags (whether inductive or electrostatic) must be energized from the outside. The pumping energy can be shielded, as can the RF emission of the tags itself. The environment is noisy. The tags send simultaneously from the same physical location. I'm not sure whether microwave-pumped digital pulse radio based tags (currently no such technology officially exists) could have a somewhat wider range and less crosstalk, but even then they could be shielded. On this background, the particular technology one uses is not very relevant, as we're talking about limits of physics. Reading secreted banknotes on your body with a magic wand reader is easy (unless wrapped in metal foil), reading them from across the room -- no, sir.
Re: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Adam Back wrote: You don't need the minter's secret key to identify the double-spender. Anyone who happens to see two coin transcripts answering different challenges with the same coin private key can recover all the attributes of the coin, including the identity attribute. This is described on p23 of [1]. Adam [1] A Technical Overview of Digital Credentials, Stefan Brands, to appear International Journal on Information Security http://www.xs4all.nl/~brands/overview.pdf Not everyone agrees with Brands that these credentials work. There's a group called PKILAB that's trying to make access/credentials to work across large organizations, and they kind of dismiss it. I haven't really sat down with them to find out why, but in general they feel that there's some high level conceptual problems. I wish I had time to read all this stuff!! But thanks for the pointers, at least I've got it copied so I can read a page or so when I get a chance. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
RE: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote: The tags are passive. All tags (whether inductive or electrostatic) must be energized from the outside. The pumping energy can be shielded, as can the RF emission of the tags itself. The environment is noisy. The tags send simultaneously from the same physical location. I'm not sure whether microwave-pumped digital pulse radio based tags (currently no such technology officially exists) could have a somewhat wider range and less crosstalk, but even then they could be shielded. On this background, the particular technology one uses is not very relevant, as we're talking about limits of physics. Reading secreted banknotes on your body with a magic wand reader is easy (unless wrapped in metal foil), reading them from across the room -- no, sir. That's true for all RFID stuff, but the next generation the military is looking at is called smart dust. The idea here is to have each speck send info, and the conglomeration of specks adds up to a large signal which can tell you something about the environment (like presense or movement of large metal objects). It's all sci-fi for now, and I think they'll still have to power the things externally so the same shielding applies, but if the bill holds enough transmitters it could have a longer range. But there's no reason a commercial object couldn't have an off switch and power supply built in - the whole wearable computer thing is aimed at that sort of application. All we gotta do is prove to the wealthy they can get more wealthy, and we get to play with the toys :-) Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
RE: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
Michael Motyka[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 10:54 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: Putting RF Tags in cash is one of those ideas with Unintended Consequences. Muggers would love having a way of determining which victims are carrying a wad, as would many salesmen (and JBTs looking to perform a 'civil confiscation' on 'a sum of currency'.) [...] Further, placing the notes in a simple aluminum foil pouch, or a wallet with equivalent lining, would cut any detectable signals by maybe 30-50 dB. Not to mention that if you didn't want your money chirping its presence every time a bad actor pinged it you could just disable the transponder in the money : mechanical pressure or repeated bending high voltage high power RF heat For paper money failure rates will probably be high anyway. Perhaps, perhaps not. Remember, the primary app for this is anti-counterfeiting. Sir: ALL your $20 bills are failing authentication. Please wait while I call Security. Peter
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
Tim May writes: I'll go back to lurking, as this thread, so to speak, is not interesting to me. (More interesting is reading Chris Hillman's page with his Categorical Primer on it, http://www.math.washington.edu/~hillman/papers.html. And to BL and JA, I downloaded O'CAML and picked up a couple of ML texts--I Go away.
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
Trei, Peter wrote: Michael Motyka[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 10:54 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: Putting RF Tags in cash is one of those ideas with Unintended Consequences. Muggers would love having a way of determining which victims are carrying a wad, as would many salesmen (and JBTs looking to perform a 'civil confiscation' on 'a sum of currency'.) [...] Further, placing the notes in a simple aluminum foil pouch, or a wallet with equivalent lining, would cut any detectable signals by maybe 30-50 dB. Not to mention that if you didn't want your money chirping its presence every time a bad actor pinged it you could just disable the transponder in the money : mechanical pressure or repeated bending high voltage high power RF heat For paper money failure rates will probably be high anyway. Perhaps, perhaps not. Remember, the primary app for this is anti-counterfeiting. Sir: ALL your $20 bills are failing authentication. Please wait while I call Security. Peter I thought of this but I felt that at this point it is no longer cash but a fixed-denomination smart card. Currently you can exchange a partial note ( ~50% ) for a new one. There would have to be a mechanism in place for failed electronic bills otherwise people might not be very confident in accepting them. Granted, the inconvenience factor could get high. Mike
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Tim May wrote: The engineers of such SmartWallets will not give them more range than the protocol needs. Extra range costs money. If Alice is expected to insert her Smart Wallet into a receptacle (for security, if for nothing else), initiating the protocol from several meters away is not in the cards, so to speak. Of course. But when you think of such applications as NID cards, it's likely range is within the spec. Yes, NID's are suspicious enough as they stand. No, people don't see this. Especially after services (or services, it doesn't seem to matter much) start being bound to them -- this is the way Finland, Estonia and a couple of other countries are going, right now, with their electronic ID's. If someone is arguing that such Smart Wallets will merely be passive announcers of bank balances, this is just too naive to waste discussion time on. Good luck selling such a system. Quite. Passive announcers of identity (or signers) with a secondary, enabled mode for actually signing something legally binding, on the other hand... Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
RE: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
-- From: Tim May[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 1:59 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 09:27 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: For paper money failure rates will probably be high anyway. Perhaps, perhaps not. Remember, the primary app for this is anti-counterfeiting. Sir: ALL your $20 bills are failing authentication. Please wait while I call Security. So, if in fact we _are_ talking about each $20 bill having such a transponder, then why are our arguments about how easy it will be to shield against remote probing not valid? Put the money in a foil packet, or fold it over, or carry it in a stack, or in a standard metal briefcase, and I _guarantee_ that detecting it from afar will be extremely difficult. The argument against shielding is that it is obnoxious that I (or anyone) should have to go even further than I already do to maintain even a fraction of the privacy which was naturally available to every person 150 years ago. Folding the bill won't make any difference. stacking them might make a small difference, if the chips are close enough to detune each other. Some transponders (not the mu-tag, AFAIK) include anti-collision techniques, so many can be detected simultaneously. If a stack of bills containing these transponders are supposed to be read from afar, way beyond what a valid bill detector is likely to be engineered to do, I'd like to see the physics worked out. Detection range turns out to be function of antenna size - the reader's antenna, not the one on the transponder. So if you have a big (eg, doorframe size) antenna, you can do a lot better than the 'valid bill detector' on the countertop. There's actually a privacy win here for the passive tags - the returned signal strength falls with the fourth power of the distance. (A stack of bills, or cards, will have extremely poor radiation patterns from any but the top or bottom bill, and probably their patterns won't be good either.) There's a basic faq at http://www.ti.com/tiris/docs/customerService/faq.htm --Tim May Peter
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 11:22 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: The argument against shielding is that it is obnoxious that I (or anyone) should have to go even further than I already do to maintain even a fraction of the privacy which was naturally available to every person 150 years ago. Not to sound too much like Brin, but there was actually very _little_ privacy 150 years ago. Everyone knew who was buying what. Small towns and small neighborhoods. But I digresss... Shielding is much easier than you think, unless shielding is outlawed. Folding the bill won't make any difference. stacking them might make a small difference, if the chips are close enough to detune each other. Some transponders (not the mu-tag, AFAIK) include anti-collision techniques, so many can be detected simultaneously. The anticollision features are in the code, not the antennas. Stacking flat antennas on top of either other is _guaranteed_ to cut the output of any of the inner antennas (and probably the edge antennas) by many, many dB. --Tim May A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked ...A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system. -- Grady Booch
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 02:22:04PM -0400, Trei, Peter wrote: | If a stack of bills containing these transponders are supposed to be | read from afar, way beyond what a valid bill detector is likely to be | engineered to do, I'd like to see the physics worked out. | | Detection range turns out to be function of antenna size - the reader's | antenna, not the one on the transponder. So if you have a big (eg, | doorframe size) antenna, you can do a lot better than the 'valid bill | detector' on the countertop. There's actually a privacy win here for | the passive tags - the returned signal strength falls with the fourth | power of the distance. Interesting. What does that work out to for, say, a 2 meter antenna? (I'm not sure if this actually works out to a security win. It may be that I can use this fast fall-off to ensure that I'm picking the right pocket..) Adam -- It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. -Hume
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Tim wrote: Everytime I comment on your citations, you go into a snit about how Gramps is insulting the whippersnappers. No, it's all about the condescending tone you take when you use your many years of experience as leverage against anyone who rejects their place in your pecking order. Whether you choose to admit it or not, you're incredibly easygoing on people here who kiss your ass, flatter you, and never dare contradict you out of a fear of retribution. Like the example from a few months ago when you related how somebody asked you if it would be okay to post certain kinds of articles to the group. Why does this please you--don't you want your friends and compatriots to have a fucking backbone? You think you're the only one here who gets to have a spine? Which isn't to say that if the group is set up a certain way, it's right to be inconsiderate of what most people want and expect: for instance, I stopped posting links to news articles when it was made plain to me that most people found it an annoyance. But it wasn't because anyone bullied me into line. If, when I came here, I had made the deliberate choice to make an effort at getting along by emphasizing our similarities instead of differences, I dare say the motivation to dissect-and-destroy every last comment I ever make would be nonexistent. But then, how interesting would that be. For all I know, in Real Life you're older than me, or you're some guy working a guard job at Lockheed. Or both. Ironically enough--but not that it matters--I haven't manufactured any of the details about myself I've given here. I suppose the prudent thing to do would be to encourage people to assume I'm a man (as if I'd have to do anything besides take a neutral nym!) and keep you all looking for the old Lockheed fart, etc. But I suppose it must the grandiosity or vanity or something that compels me to vent under the guise of myself. Which is a pretty funny way to put it actually, since what I say here is far more real than what most people see of me in the real world in a lifetime. Which is probably part of the point anyway. Not that I've given anyone the slightest reason to believe a word of it, but there it is. Yeah yeah, I know--go tell it to Oprah. Or you may be the grad student at Hoboken State College you appear to be. A slur, eh? Not bad. I suspect you're being a little disingenuous though. (If I really were at Hoboken, where's the sting in it?) Ah well, think what you want--I don't have anything to prove. Or shouldn't, anyway. Whatever, I know that your main method of argument is either a bunch of Bah comments followed with cites apropos of nothing you've dug up. Such as your refutation of category theory by digging up some of the usual computer vision and scene analysis junk that's been going around for 40 years. I did no such thing! You asked what happened to general systems theory and expressed a negative view of OR that, though entirely warranted thirty years ago, isn't true of what some people are doing today. So I gave a couple of cites to papers that show how these concepts have been evolving, I thought you might enjoy them. Entirely tangential to the main point of your post, but it's new and it's not junk, damn it. If it's not interesting to you, fine-- but there certainly wasn't any criticism of anything related to you somehow hidden in it. I stand by my comment that shielding a thread in a $100 bill, for example, is vastly easier than detecting it. Your cites about WiFi frequencies and 3 meter ranges and suchlike don't mean much. No of course not, since they were only meant to give a sense of the volume of related research people are doing--hence my only point that 20 years seems a little generous. ~~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - --Thomas Paine -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPLSLY/g5Tuca7bfvEQLGigCeOjRDe4ApAZLoTIuGFWxdi/pVTTwAnjjx aObuLmF9JjD+8oGJj2Y2zBoX =lfHT -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 10:59:32AM -0700, Tim May wrote: | On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 09:27 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: | For paper money failure rates will probably be high anyway. | So, if in fact we _are_ talking about each $20 bill having such a | transponder, then why are our arguments about how easy it will be to | shield against remote probing not valid? Put the money in a foil packet, | or fold it over, or carry it in a stack, or in a standard metal | briefcase, and I _guarantee_ that detecting it from afar will be | extremely difficult. | | If a stack of bills containing these transponders are supposed to be | read from afar, way beyond what a valid bill detector is likely to be | engineered to do, I'd like to see the physics worked out. | | (A stack of bills, or cards, will have extremely poor radiation patterns | from any but the top or bottom bill, and probably their patterns won't | be good either.) Does it matter? Intuitively, you broadcast a radio signal, and pick up from that where the largest clusters of bills are. Repeat several times if needed. You don't care about signal accuracy, just magnitude. You then decide if the people with wads of cash look like an easy mugging target. Adam -- It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. -Hume
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Tim May wrote: So, if in fact we _are_ talking about each $20 bill having such a transponder, then why are our arguments about how easy it will be to shield against remote probing not valid? Because the economics do not work. People simply aren't knowledgeable/interested enough to actually shield their notes, even if this would only imply buying a foil-shielded wallet. Especially if such wallets are outlawed. (Yes, this is starting to sound like too much, even if governments don't always behave rationally.) (A stack of bills, or cards, will have extremely poor radiation patterns from any but the top or bottom bill, and probably their patterns won't be good either.) How come? True, if a bill is idealized as being planar, you'll have trouble on the plane. Spatial diversity will take care of that. Otherwise, a common note has plenty of surface to do your thing on. Especially at higher frequencies, like UHF and beyond. Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], tel:+358-50-5756111 student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front openpgp: 050985C2/025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2
Big wads of grubby cash
Peter Gutmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] previously stated: Being in the US and having to handle wads of tattered, grubby $1 notes, many of which wouldn't be accepted by vending machines because of their condition or weren't the sort of thing you'd want to touch just before you ate the food you'd bought with them, really showed me what I was missing with $1 coins. Well, that's what happens when you outlaw money laundering, Peter. I say money should be laundered regularly. And ironing makes it fit much more neatly in the wallet. My $0.02. yrs, etc, The Neat Freak --- You'll put your eye out! -- Christmas Story
Re: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-linetech)
I've had several dozen of these (stamp and other vending machines provided them as change here in NYC), and kept only one. They're horrible. Sure, they look like gold when you get them but they oxidize quickly when handled and look worse than old pennies. Serves the mint right for trying to pass what clearly is a slap in the face of anyone who remembers that the US currency was at one time tethered to actual gold. --Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--- + ^ + :Surveillance cameras|Passwords are like underwear. You don't /|\ \|/ :aren't security. A |share them, you don't hang them on your/\|/\ --*--:camera won't stop a |monitor, or under your keyboard, you \/|\/ /|\ :masked killer, but |don't email them, or put them on a web \|/ + v + :will violate privacy|site, and you must change them very often. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Steve Furlong wrote: Trei, Peter wrote: US don't want dollar coins Just about a year ago, they tried again, with the 'Sacagawea' or 'Golden Dollar'. This is a very handsome coin, gold in color, but it was the same size as a SBA dollar (to fit the machines). You can still confuse it with a quarter in your pocket or in the dark. It's been months since I've seen one. I've seen exactly two Sac coins, both right after they were introduced. I gave one to my son to save and one to an amateur collector.
Coins vs. bills
On 10 Apr 2002 at 13:43, Sunder wrote: I've had several dozen of these (stamp and other vending machines provided them as change here in NYC), and kept only one. You're not supposed to keep currency, you're supposed to spend it. I generally prefer the bills to coins, because the coins make an annoying jjingle jangle and also wear out my pockets. They're horrible. Sure, they look like gold when you get them but they oxidize quickly when handled and look worse than old pennies. Serves the mint right for trying to pass what clearly is a slap in the face of anyone who remembers that the US currency was at one time tethered to actual gold. Now that everyone knows that even coins are only of symbolic value, I don't see why they don't make them out of plastic. They'd be lighter, clink less, they could come in all sorts of pretty colors, and as long as they use a good quality plastic they shouldn't wear out too fast. OTOH, it'd be kind of embarrassing if wooden nickles were made from a highre quality material than real ones. But they'd probably stop calling them nickles if they didn't have any nickle at all in them and didn't even look like nickle. George
Re: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 07:47:51PM -0700, Morlock Elloi wrote: In the smart card setting with Brands protocols there is a host computer (eg pda, laptop, mobile-phone main processor, desktop) and a tamper-resistant smart-card which computes part of the coin transfer and prevents double-spending (to the limit of it's tamper-resistance). I don't understand which problem are you trying to solve. The issue the smart-card setting addresses is that people don't, or anyway shouldn't place great trust in closed systems that they, or someone with the technical background necessary can not examine. A smart card is such a closed system. The framework allows the use of smartcards to resist fraud while not making it necessary to for the users to trust the smart-card with their privacy. Privacy is controlled by the more auditable host computer. Adam Apart for few cypherpunks, People With Real Money and mafia, all of whom already have all the anonymity they want, sheeple is handled by corporations whose income depends on non-anonymity. I don't see a market pressure for anon replacement for credit cards from the consumer side any more that I see pressure for IPSec'd traffic from Joe FivePack.
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 12:25 PM, Sampo Syreeni wrote: On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Tim May wrote: (A stack of bills, or cards, will have extremely poor radiation patterns from any but the top or bottom bill, and probably their patterns won't be good either.) How come? True, if a bill is idealized as being planar, you'll have trouble on the plane. Spatial diversity will take care of that. Otherwise, a common note has plenty of surface to do your thing on. Especially at higher frequencies, like UHF and beyond. How come? Because I am assuming the transponders are in the same position on each bill. If you want to posit some spatial diversity model, that helps, but not but a huge amount. This sounds too science fictionish to actually deploy (transponders are not the same as letters, and cannot be moved around on a random basis). UHF is hard to launch/receive from a small, planar antenna. UWB is easier to launch from a small ( cm) antenna, but is usually too directional. A stack will interfere, in the sense that planar antennas will couple to each other (radiated signal from A will hit B square on, etc.). As for the proles being too cheap, too gullible to even bother to lightly shield, sounds like evolution in action. Actually, more to the point, it means that the vast infrastructure of remote bill readers will, perforce, pick up the proles. True money launderers will use shielding. (Actually, this is all oriented at walking around money, so the vast infrastructure will never actually get built, as there is no interest in monitoring trivial amounts.) I'm done with this thread, though. --Tim May They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote. --Rep. Ron Paul, TX, on how few Congresscritters saw the USA-PATRIOT Bill before voting overwhelmingly to impose a police state
RE: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
30 seconds in a microwave on high, stir and rotate tray... -Original Message- From: Michael Motyka [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 8:24 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 10:54 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: Putting RF Tags in cash is one of those ideas with Unintended Consequences. Muggers would love having a way of determining which victims are carrying a wad, as would many salesmen (and JBTs looking to perform a 'civil confiscation' on 'a sum of currency'.) Physics-wise, it's a jiveass fantasy. No way are there micro-strips readable from a distance in today's currency, and very likely not in the next 20 years. (I don't dispute that a careful lab setup could maybe read a note at a few meters, in a properly-shielded environment, without any shieding between note and detectors, and with enough time and tuning. But a wad of bills, folded, stuffed, and with little time to make the detection...an altogether different kettle of fish.) Further, placing the notes in a simple aluminum foil pouch, or a wallet with equivalent lining, would cut any detectable signals by maybe 30-50 dB. Or more. Not to mention that if you didn't want your money chirping its presence every time a bad actor pinged it you could just disable the transponder in the money : mechanical pressure or repeated bending high voltage high power RF heat For paper money failure rates will probably be high anyway. --Tim May I'm guessing that electronic tracking or outright elimination of cash would be coupled with a surge in the use of barter and alternative monies. Mike
Re: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Adam Back wrote: Is there anything specific PKILAB have said about Brands certs? No, it was early in the set up when it was discussed. Sounds like they want to at least listen to him :-) btw I did a google search for PKILAB and Brands to see if I could find anything along the lines you mention and look what it said: Mar 2001 Welcome Stefan Brands to PKILabs Advisory Board http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~lists/archive/pkilab/msg00179.html Yup, that's the place! I told them I thought the math was valid, but I've really no idea what the high level stuff is they are trying to do. I avoid large organizations when possible, and most of their stuff is aimed at problems in that realm, so I'm not paying too close attention. Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
How do we trust bits?
How do we trust bits to represent money? Someone asked this (Mike Rosing, I think it was). I argue that the question is, as stated, not well-grounded at this time. No one is asking for bits to be trusted, from first principles, absent real products and a real embedding in a financial system. Perhaps in N years, when Chaum/Brands kinds of digital money are actually being used, such a question will be more meaningful. Then we can ask Mary Jones why she trusts that the numbers being sent between her smart card or computer to her bank or moneychanger are really trustable. Until then, asking Mary why she should trust bits as money is inappropriate. However, even then, in N years, the question will be problematic. Consider this: we 'trust bits flowing between credit card verifiers, banks, and vendors. And we trust the welter of bits flowing in and amongst computers handling bank accounts, checks, traveller's checks, international clearing houses, SWIFT, etc. None of these systems are handling money in anything but a bookkeeping or accounting sense. Money is marks. Trust. Trust is a misleading concept. I recommend (and have done so for a long time...this is not new) doing a coordinate shift and recasting discussions about trust into discussions about belief. * At a very early age most children learn that the coins given to them by their parents may be exchanged for ice cream cones and rides on ponies. (Or for vials of crack, translating this experience into the inner cities.) Do they trust that a quarter is really a quarter, or is really money? No, they merely have an _expectation_, a _belief_, that the future will continue to look very much like the past and that the quarters in their pocket will very likely, almost with certainty, be accepted by store owners. * At a somewhat later age, most children are introduced to the ideas of bank accounts. Often through school-sponsored Savings Bond programs or passbook savings accounts. (These fell into disfavor during the inflationary 70s.). In any case, children learn to _expect_, to _believe_, that the markings in their passbooks mean that a bank will let them take dollars and quarters out with the appropriate incantations to the bank teller. Whether the money in the bank is real or imaginary is not at issue, only the expectation of a future. * And so on. Nearly all forms of money we encounter in the modern world are based on this pattern that the future will, in most cases, look a lot like the future. When there are exceptions, as with bank failures or frauds, this modifies the belief function. (Children learn, most of them, that lending money to other children and expecting to get it back is much different than depositing/lending money to the Big Bank and expecting to get it back. Children of the 1930s or of Weimar Germany may have suitable tweaks to this model, but the larger point is the same.) Bayesian reasoning, in other words. Experiential learning, with actors/institutions embedded in a larger matrix. The Big Bank is _expected_ to be more reputable, more trustable, because of a bunch of connections it has to other actors, to the past, and to its future. Some of these things we call reputation (or reputation capital), some we call trust. But belief is the ultimate fabric, the ultimate currency. We place _bets_ on whether loans will be repaid (risk, loansharking, vigorish, etc.). We _discount_ certain financial instruments based on our expectations or beliefs about the future. Furthermore, the entire is-a object model, where is-a bank and has-an account balance of can and SHOULD (IMO) be replaced with a more realistic and more interesting model of believes. All of digital money is recastable in terms of Alice believes, Bob believes, Charles believes, etc. All of finance is about belief. (And there are very intriguing semantics of these models. Saul Kripke is one place to look, as he pioneered the possible worlds semantics approach. All of human and animal behavior is largely based on building internal models of how the world works, what other people and animals will be doing (will be doing in a possible worlds sense), and what the implications of various courses of action will likely be.) We don't trust that the sun will rise tomorrow: we _believe_ it will rise, because it has for every day for the past several billion years and we see no causal reason to doubt that 0.947365 of all possible worlds involve the sun coming up. Operationally, we will lay heavy odds with anyone that the sun will come up. Likewise, we don't trust that Bank of America will give us our money back when we ask for it (modulor the right incantations and such): we _believe_ very strongly that it will. When people gain experience with a complex protocol, for example, and they start to see the same behavior, then they start to trust (= believe, = make bets) the protocol. Such was it when we were children
