[sudo-discuss] Freedom of name: making it stick via commerce.

[Anon195714]

Yo's-

It occurred to me, there's fertile ground for a viable startup (and more
right-livelihood jobs), as follows (people from SudoRoom & other local
hackerspaces could do this):

Anonymous e-commerce (Anonymerse?;-)

How it works from the average user's perspective:

You purchase a prepaid card such as a gift card, using cash.  It has a
card number but not a name on it. 

With this card, you sign up for an Anonymerse account, using any name
you choose, and providing the card number for purchases on your account.

The account comes with webmail in your chosen name, so it's not linked
to your broadband provider.

Now you can go online and buy stuff you don't want linked to your "legal
name."  A pair of socks here, a (consenting adult) porn DVD there, a
dissident political book, whatever.  

If the online purchases are downloads, you can download them via your
Anonymerse webmail account.

If the purchases are physical goods, you can have them delivered.  But
where, that won't be tracked to your "legal name"? 

The answer is:  "Track the package, not the person." 

Ever hear of "private mailbox" services?  FedEx and UPS run these as a
chain, but there are scores of "mom & pop" services like this; I've used
one since the early 80s.  They have a trade association.  So we get the
trade association onboard as follows:

If someone wants a package shipped to a private mailbox service and they
are not a regular boxholder, they can receive the package by providing
a) the package tracking number from the Post Office, FedEx, or UPS, and
b) paying a nominal fee for receiving & handling, that is equivalent to
the mailbox service's fee for handling when they ship something. 

So you receive the invoice and package tracking number at your
Anonymerse webmail address, and you print out the tracking information,
and bring it into the private mailbox service where you've had the
package shipped. 

If the private mailbox services don't want to do it, the same service
could be provided by any "mom & pop" corner store. 

Amazon is presently setting up a deal with 7-11 stores to handle
packages for people who can't be at home during delivery hours.  You
order something from Amazon and it comes in to your local 7-11, which
holds it for you until you come in to pick it up after work.  This gives
7-11 stores a service they can offer that local mom & pop stores can't. 

So we go to those mom & pop stores with something that will compete with
7-11, and they'll be eager to do it.

OK, now how do we prevent this being used by Fred Fraudster, Pete
Pedophile, and Terry Terrorist?

One way would be for the stores to take your picture for every package
pickup.  The contents of stores' video systems are typically not
available to third parties except with a subpoena or a search warrant. 
To my mind those protections are sufficient: they are traditional
powers, not "expanded" or "enhanced" powers. 

Another option would be to require photo ID, same as when buying alcohol
beverages, which has the same protections for these types of
decentralized transactions.  For example if someone buys alcohol for a
minor, who then drinks, drives, and runs over a pedestrian, the legal
system can seek to discover where the alcohol was bought and who bought
it.  This isn't considered a civil liberties threat, and The Powers That
Be have not used this information for fishing expeditions.

So, Anonymerse Inc. can provide the participating stores with a camera
or recording device for photo IDs, that is encrypted with an Anonymerse
key.  It would have a MODEM connection, not an Ethernet or broadband
connection, so getting data from it would not be "easy."  If an attorney
or law enforcement, bearing a subpoena or search warrant, wants to get
at the data, the shop owner would convey the warrant or subpoena to
Anonymerse, which would provide the decryption key for that store's data
recording unit.  At that point the data could be downloaded via MODEM:
it would take a while, but the wheels of justice are designed to turn
slowly.  A "keep-alive" key might be needed to be refreshed on a weekly
basis to prevent the unit from self-wiping on the basis that it might
have been stolen. 

If this works as planned, there should be sufficient volume of
commercial transactions to make it impossible to stop.  Keep in mind
that when PayPal was first started, there was a lot of talk about it
being an illegal violation of banking regulations and so on. 

PayPal won that round.  We could win the next round. 

-G.