Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 11:58 AM, Faustine wrote: > 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. You haven't contributed anything interesting that I can recall. Even if you discount my comments, surely you must have noticed that rarely do your posts generate significant follow-up. (Which is a small blessing.) Sometimes you natter about about you think the RAND Corporation, your apparent ideal, would do things, and sometimes you praise Herman Kahn and other O.R. types. But you have nothing significant to contribute about anything closely related to list themes. > You should think about some of the real issues and come up with some kind of incisive analysis or creative proposal--even Choate is more on-topic than you've been. The lectures from you about how we're a bunch of untrained amateurs are getting old. --Tim May "Dogs can't conceive of a group of cats without an alpha cat." --David Honig, on the Cypherpunks list, 2001-11
"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. Su
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
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: 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: 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: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 06:50:24AM -0700, Mike Rosing wrote: > 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. Is there anything specific PKILAB have said about Brands certs? I'm not sure what their claim could be, from what I can see the Brands credentials provide or can equally be used with all of the common PKI models (RAs, CAs, OCSP, short-lived certs, revocation lists) plus a bunch of other options (blind refresh, update, privacy, etc) which are not possible with X.509 identity and attribute certificate PKIX stuff. 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 Adam > 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
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-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: > > <> > > > 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.
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: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wed, 10 Apr 2002, Tim May wrote: >A meter-sized antenna is not going to efficiently radiate >sub-millimeter-sized waves. But it does give you brutal directivity. If you're truly working with sub-millimeter waves, you might be able to discriminate between individual bills with a phased array this size. 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
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
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 11:22 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: > 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. A meter-sized antenna is not going to efficiently radiate sub-millimeter-sized waves. --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
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 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
> -- > 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 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
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. 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.) --Tim May "Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice."--Barry Goldwater
Re: LATimes misuse of 'hacker' for saboteur
On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 09:24 AM, Khoder bin Hakkin wrote: > [Unfortunate that a paper llike the Times would confusing hacking and > simple sabotage by a fired > sysop. Since "lost time" is part of the damages, why isn't spam > illegal?] Because one act is initiation of force and the other is merely unwanted distraction. Property rights analysis clarifies this. --Tim May
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 07:44 AM, Trei, Peter wrote: > Tim: I advise you to get up to speed on this stuff. I think I'm more up to speed on small detectors than I want to be (through my involvement with an ultrawideband company). But I misunderstood the discussions about currency being tagged vs. wallets with transponders. (Which I don't see Joe Sixpack ever adopting in our lifetimes, for multiple of the usual reasons.) > >> 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. >> > Most people don't, and won't do this. You may not worry about the > sheeple, > but I do. > I figure the sheeple will mostly take of themselves. And, in fact, they do, through a kind of collective recoiling from certain things, coupled with monkeywrenching, deliberate misuse, etc. The "interesting" part of the space of uses of digital money is certainly, for me at least, not in the "wallets with transponders so that Big Brother can track your cash." Selective disclosure of information (SDI) and all that stuff. If wallets carry RF ZKIPS communication capabilities, as they probably will, the designed range will be small. And the wallet will probably have to be "enabled." What I would picture is something like this: Alice approaches a kiosk or transfer point of some sort. She pulls out her SmartWallet (TM), enters a PIN or fingerprint, which turns on the device for some number of seconds, aims it at (or actually inserts it into) a receiver, and a ZKIPS protocol begins firing back and forth. (Some here have said the Hitachi tags are passive. Fine. Useful for things like tracking railroad boxcars or shipping containers, where attaching a battery would be more expensive, less reliable, and too much work. But for a smart card or Smart Wallet, there will be active processing _anyway_ (as the account balance changes, as PINs are entered, etc.), so having a small battery, perhaps light-rechargeable (*), is OK. (* Smart cards already have this. I have a thin credit card calculator from the early 80s that works this way.) And as in that standard example of "capabilities," she doesn't say "please look inside my wallet and take what you need." Rather, she authorizes a specific amount or limit (she extends a capability right, rather than an access right). 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. 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. --Tim May "That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 08:23 AM, Michael Motyka wrote: > 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. > As I said in another article, I think there'll be zero acceptance rate for any _general_ smartcard cash system which: -- has no user-controlled on/off switch, or user authentication (PIN entry at minimum) -- has a wide broadcast pattern -- generally, has a "promiscuous" disclosure model By "general" I mean a store of value to be used roughly as cash and credit cards are used today. Specialized uses such as subway or bridge token systems may have different models. But they will likely also be: -- limited in amount of money -- linked to security protocols, e.g., only BART turnstile nominally has access -- broadcast range and transponder physics tuned to specific use (e.g., BART turnstyle) Now, of course, there may be calls by government for "back doors," for forced promiscuity, but this will complicate the engineering immensely. And shielding is still trivial. I just don't see this as an interesting or fruitful discussion...maybe it's going to be the new version of the "Can I use thermite to destroy my data?" recurring thread. --Tim May "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." --John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General
LATimes misuse of 'hacker' for saboteur
[Unfortunate that a paper llike the Times would confusing hacking and simple sabotage by a fired sysop. Since "lost time" is part of the damages, why isn't spam illegal?] Hacker Gets 16 Months for Crashing Firm's Computers [*] By JEAN GUCCIONE, TIMES STAFF WRITER A disgruntled former employee was sentenced Tuesday to 16 months in state prison and ordered to pay $50,000 in restitution for hacking into a defense contractor's computer and crashing the system. In February 2000, a month after being fired, Oganesyan tapped into H.R. Textron's computer and caused the system to crash for a day, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Jonathan Fairtlough. Seven hundred employees at company offices in Valencia, Pacoima and Ohio were unable to use their computers, causing $211,000 in lost labor costs, Fairtlough said. http://latimes.com/editions/valley/la-25622apr10.story?coll=la%2Deditions%2Dvalley
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
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
> 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 <[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: 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
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: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
> Tim May[SMTP:[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.) > Tim: I advise you to get up to speed on this stuff. I don't recall anyone using the phrase 'micro-strips', which suggests you're erroneously linking this discussion to the theory that there are detectors for the anti-counterfeiting strips built into much modern currency. (FWIW, the old British bills did use a metallic strip - if you scraped off the paper over it you could see the metal. US bills use a polymer strip). We're discussing RFID tags, which are a bit different. In particular, the mu-tag from Hitachi, which is 0.4 mm square, and 60-150 microns thick, depending on version. You can see a picture at http://beta.kpix.com/news/local/2001/12/03/Tiny_Bay_Area_Invention_Could_Cha nge_Security.html (the chips are the things that look like iron filings) There was a good article in the Economist a while back. If you're not a subscriber, it's reprinted (without a registration requirement) at http://www.cfo.com/article/1,5309,5867,00.html A presentation can be found at http://www.hitachi.com/products/electronic/semiconductorcomponent/elecrfid/e lecrfidspecs/index.html The version with the on-chip antenna has a range of about 1cm. The version with an off-chip antenna has a range of 25cm (and possibly up to 1 meter). All it does is spit back a 128 bit number. Most current applications appear to be for checking the authenticity of an item in a cooperative environment. 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. RFIDs are very scary from a privacy point of view, and very little attention is being paid to them. Most are considerably heftier than the mu-chip, but they get cheaper and smaller every year. Mu-chips cost 10-15 cents. > 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. > Most people don't, and won't do this. You may not worry about the sheeple, but I do. > --Tim May > Peter
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: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > On 9 Apr 2002 at 16:54, Ken Brown wrote: > > > But paper money is such a 20th-century thing! These days we're slowly > > drifting back to higher value metal coins (2 pounds out for a few years > > now, 5 pounds coming soon I think). Much more fun. Feels like real > > treasure! Less of the floppy stuff, we want our ecash to look like real > > cash. > > > > Ken > > > Yeah, but is that because people want it, or because the treasury > wants it? They've been trying to foist dollar coins on > US for years because they're cheaper (last forever and cost > about a dime to make vs. last about a year and cost maybe 3 cents > to make) but people hate them and don't use them. Over here most people seem to prefer coins these days. Low-value notes have a cheap-and-nasty feel to them. They get all furry.
Re: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 06:45:43AM -0700, Mike Rosing wrote: > On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Adam Back wrote: > > If you use the normal approach of putting the identity in the coin, > > you can't double-spend anonymously. > > But it's not until the coin goes back online, you need the minter's secret > key to decode the chain (maybe I have that wrong?). 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
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 1
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 07:06 PM, Mike Rosing wrote: > On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Tim May wrote: > >> 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. > > That solves the theives problem :-) And you wouldn't need a wad, that's > the whole point. You'd just need 1. It could transfer money just > like a > smart card. I must've missed the setup for this thread...I assumed the talk was of the standard "detector threads in our money" paranoia. From your description, it sounds like you're talking about a smart card variant. Why would it be set to "broadcast amount" or anything remotely like this? No smartcard protocol has this, nobody in their right mind would propose it as an interesting protocol (not even the Chaumian "untraceable road toll" transponders). Smartcards or stored value wallets will obviously not be set, voluntarily or knowingly to broadcast their contents, nor to be interrogated by outsiders. Simple access control, ZKIPS, etc. 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 sense a pun on Mac Lane in "ML for the Working Programmer." Just read Egan's "Quarantine," so the Hilbert vectors are coruscating tonight.) A couple of last comments: > > But I'll grant it's science fiction at this point. Maybe a smart card > that has the weight of a gold coin with some thickness to it would work > better. For the filthy rich, make the outside real gold! The rest of > us > can use brass. > > I still think the basic problem is simple - how do you trust the bits? > If > the actual computations are done inside a secure box, most people will > trust it. There will always be people who try to beat the system, but > it'll take a lot of technology, and they'll do it often enough to get > caught (most theives simply don't want to pass up a good deal when they > invent one :-) The actual structure of the box doesn't matter - a > floppy > cloth bill or thick coin is still a computer. Who makes and distributes > it is what matters. > > Patience, persistence, truth, > Dr. mike > Frankly, this is a remarkably naive level of understanding of digital money. Have you read any of Chaum's papers? Have you thought deeply about the issues? --Tim May "You don't expect governments to obey the law because of some higher moral development. You expect them to obey the law because they know that if they don't, those who aren't shot will be hanged." - -Michael Shirley
Re: IMF/IRS/US, The truth must come out eventually...
Quoting Nob Odie ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > Any comments? Yes. Your repetition of the phrase `get the disks' makes me think of Mormonism, but I can't explain exactly why that is. Regards, Steve -- Just fake it. -- Include "35da3c9e079dcf68ec3a608e8c0a47f6" somewhere in your message when you reply.
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/ **
practical limits of crypto technology
I used to feel reasonably safe using PGP 2.6.2. I still use it, but not the unix port whose code I actually looked at and ran some test vectors on. I use ports on non-unix boxes that I have no source for, and on some newer machines I even used (oh, shame) 7.0.3 several times. So I don't think I'll trust more than, say $10K to this particular encryption. If I ever needed to deal with millions or lives, I'd use OTP on CDs (never forget to take one CD from the pair when you visit faraway friends and associates.) Now that crypto is not sexy any more, and buzzwords have replaced content, I don't think that anyone examines the PGP code any more. When was the last time someone looked at 2.6.2 or any other sources available for download or just checked the signatures ? Just for fun, I downloaded 2.6.2 sources for mac. Signed with key ID 0x0DBF906D. Where do I find whose key is that ? According to MIT server, http://keyserver.linux.it/, http://www.dfn-pca.de/pgpkserv/, it's: 1994/08/27 Jeffrey I. Schiller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pgp.com's server is offline. http://www.infran.ru/PGP/pks-commands.html is damaged So 3 servers agree. But the problem is, I do not know who Jeffrey I. Schiller is and should I trust him. And I don't care about any assurances that come from people personally unknown to me via electronic means. And I am not going to examine the code. End of research. So I'll stick to my $10K limit, which essentially means that I treat PGP as an elaborate uuencode that few will bother to uudecode for gain of less than $10k. This is practical security for me of a software package that has been around for decade and that was probably scrutinised more than any other code on the planet. So, if I were to use a stand-alone e-money technology (not maintained/backed by the bank/government, but mathematically secure in itself and therefore equivalent to cash - yes, I know that such does not exist yet) then it would have to get similar exposure as PGP did, be there for several years, and still I would not trust more than few $K to it. Which means that it is highly unlikely that any sizeable portion of my income or expenses will ever be transferred by untracable e-money. = end (of original message) Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows: Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax http://taxes.yahoo.com/
Re: Detectable cash notes a fantasy
On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 07:43 PM, Faustine wrote: > -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- > Hash: SHA1 > > Tim wrote: > >> 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'm not so sure it'll take that long, given the amount of effort people > are > putting into it. Here are some relevant articles from that single > five-month > old issue of Global ID Magazine I referenced... Everytime I comment on your citations, you go into a snit about how "Gramps" is insulting the "whippersnappers." 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. Or you may be the grad student at Hoboken State College you appear to be. 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 year. 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. (As it happens, and you'll go into your "whippersnapper" rant for my mentioning names, but I'm an early investor in one of the leading ultrawideband (UWB) companies, one competing with the better-known Time Domain. Their antennas are launching high-current pulses in WiFi and even higher frequencies...the tagline is always "DC-to-daylight," of course, but 99% or so of the radiated power is in the .5-10 GHz band. I was up at their lab last Friday, checking on progress, walking around inside the cargo shipping container they've got set up at their place, and looking down on Skywalker Ranch below them. UWB may turn out to be useful, but it has nothing to do with detecting threads embedded in Ben Franklins.) > A long range ID system > http://web.tiscali.it/homeglobal/issues/0111/Nov01-07.pdf > > Utilising the internationally approved 2.45Ghz UHF band allows > specialised > readers to access the information contained in transponders at a > distance of up > to three metres. Familiar sources of disturbance such as reflection, > noise > interference and overreach have been eliminated by integrating UMTS/GSM > technologies --Tim May "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship." --Alexander Fraser Tyler
Re: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-line tech)
On Tue, 9 Apr 2002, Morlock Elloi wrote: > 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. Here's the rub. When we can trade e-cash the same way we trade meat cash for illegal goods, it will fly. Until then, forget it. The pot head has to be able to use it, without worry, before e-cash can really be anonymous and trusted. Once it works for the mafia, it works for everybody :-) Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
Re: all about transferable off-line ecash (Re: Brands off-linete ch)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: >"Our appointed masters" at the mint are the ones who WANT us to use the "new >currency" because it saves them money. It's the stores and the people that >don't use or want them. Just as a reference point, NZ switched from paper $1 and $2 to coins vaguely similar to the US dollar coin a few years ago without any fuss. If the USG simply told people the notes were being withdrawn in 12 months (or whatver), the change should work OK. Having used both, I *much* prefer the coins. 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. Peter.
