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

[Anon195714]

Hi Andrew-

Do you know for a fact that the legal issue with PayPal was "money
laundering", and that they solved it by some kind of agreement to hold
and optionally keep the proceeds of "risky" transactions?

I'd be interested in the legal definition of money laundering.  I'm
inclined to believe that the definition includes a provision about
"...for criminal purposes, or in facilitation of a criminal or
civilly-tortious act..."  That is, the mere fact of anonymity does not
make for money laundering, any more than it does when paying cash.

But how does Anonymerse differ from any other transaction with a
pre-paid (anonymous) card?  That is, if you get a gift card for Target
and you go into the store and buy a few pairs of underwear, does the
store require to see photo ID?, and if so, what do they do with the name
data they collect?  And then, why don't they card you when you pay cash,
which after all could be stolen money?

IF the only thing standing between us and Anonymerse is to agree to hold
up "risky" transactions, then we can agree to do that:  no purchases of
firearms, ammo, chemicals, biological materials, or "any goods that are
restricted from being freely shipped via the Post Office." 

The "Post Office" explanation is good enough to serve the purpose
without appearing to give even an inch on the core civil rights issues. 
There are some who would object to such limitations, but to my mind they
are a small price to pay for the freedom to buy _anything else_ without
having one's name attached to it and subject to stalking by Big Data.

But "risky transactions" are not isomorphic with "money laundering" or
"criminal purposes," as someone could just as easily convert stolen
money into any conventional goods and sell the goods on Ebay.

When the crypto debate was a hot topic, I had a few lengthy
conversations with a woman who was a federal prosecutor in a
high-profile hacker case (at the time, there was a lot of friendly
debate between hackers and feds, so a lot of people were having these
kinds of conversations; nowadays similar conversations are occurring
about biohacking). 

My position was that for every criminal act there are physical
concomitants that can be used as evidence to convict.  She raised the
issues of financial fraud and child pornography.  I conceded that she
had a valid point there: the evidence for those crimes could be pure
information, and if encrypted, inaccessible to prosecution.  But in any
case, the crypto debate was won by e-commerce and EFF legal actions.

But here we're only talking about the ability to perform online
transactions with the same anonymity as cash transactions: taking
something that occurs face-to-face all the time and bringing it online. 
This should be an easier debate to win. 

There's another potential fallback position that could be an absolute
win: that Anonymerse would collect legal names, but would not provide
them to third parties except under subpoena or search warrant.  That
kills any objection that's based on the issue of potential money laundering.

There's a really major point that needs to be made here, that most
people don't get.

And that includes most people at Sudo Room.

I'll put it in subsequent email to follow this...

-G.


=====



On 13-03-16-Sat 7:55 PM, Andrew wrote:
>
> While i entirely support this, money laundering is illegal as far as i
> know. But, it would still be interesting to find a loophole and make
> something like this in a simplified form work.
>
> Keep in mind though that pay pal is still around due to thier
> draconian practice of holding and sometimes keeping the proceeds of
> any mildly "risky" transaction.
>
> On Mar 16, 2013 7:34 PM, "Anon195714" <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net
> <mailto:anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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