The Privacy/Untraceability Sweet Spot
georgemw at speakeasy.net
georgemw at speakeasy.net
Sat Sep 1 17:55:11 PDT 2001
Having read Tim's reply already, I'll confine myself to a point he
didn't address.
On 1 Sep 2001, at 22:30, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> It's true that this does not directly impact the design. But we can't
> ignore the question, is this a market we want to pursue. For example,
> there are any number of papers on key escrow systems, or "fair" electronic
> cash (where only the government can trace it). Legitimate businesses
> might well be willing to use such systems. So there is profit to be made,
> all the more profit since the government is less likely to hassle you.
Note, however, that this IS a question of design, not merely one
of marketing.
The system doesn't know "terrorists" from "freedom fighters". The
system doesn't know pornographers from Falun Gongers.
A system does (or at least could) know clients who want to send
megabytes of data from ones who only want top send a few bits. It
does know clients who insist on real-time or near real-time
transmission from ones who would accept substantial transmission
delay times. It knows clients who insist their system be free and
trivial to use from those willing to spend a fair amount and go to a
certain degree of effort to make damn sure they're doing things
right.
It knows the difference between broadcasting and person-to-person
communication. And it knows whether clients are willing to accept
the idea that some "trusted third party" could compromise their
identity, or whether they trust no one.
> Would you say that discussions of such technologies would and should be
> encouraged on the cypherpunks list?
Certainly they should be "discussed", if only to point out what's
wrong with them, or speculate how the escrow mechanism
might be defeated or compromised.
>That it doesn't matter whether this
> helps us in or long-term goal or not?
>
Long-term consequences are notoriously hard to predict. For
example, it's quite possible somebody who develops
and implements a digital cash system with some sort of
key escrow mechanism might be doing the world a big favor,
since cloning it and cutting out the escrow part might be a lot
easier than developing a similar system from scratch. Or maybe
not, as I said, hard to say.
> Surely not. Morality plays a part in everything we do. We have goals
> in common. We should structure our efforts so that they are in accordance
> with our highest goals. Having principles is nothing to be ashamed of.
> We all have them, and we should be proud of that.
>
OK. Freedom=good. Tyranny=bad. Now that we've agreed on
moral principles, time to move on.
George
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