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

Fri Mar 22 09:42:25 PDT 2013

I'm not talking about pay pal's reaction to money laundering, but there
reaction to pretty much anything they think is maybe not right

http://lifehacker.com/5821634/why-you-should-ditch-paypal-and-use-these-other-services-to-send-people-money

"They like to make poor decisions in the name of security, such as holding
your money under review for no
reason<http://consumerist.com/2011/06/paypal-keeps-freelancers-pay-under-review-because-they-feel-like-it-1.html>
, draining your checking account when you report
fraud<http://consumerist.com/2011/02/paypal-resolves-dispute-in-your-favor-by-draining-your-checking-account.html>
,putting 20% of your money in a rolling reserve account without
asking<http://consumerist.com/2009/08/paypal-takes-bite-out-of-users-funds-calls-it-rolling-reserve.html>,
and much more <http://www.aboutpaypal.org/>. Personally, despite being a
long-time user, I've had funds held for virtually no reason at all on
several occasions and a number of other minor but nonetheless inconvenient
problems."

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 8:19 PM, Anon195714 <anon195714 at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

>
>
> 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> 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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>> sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org
>> http://lists.sudoroom.org/listinfo/sudo-discuss
>>
>
>

-- 
---------
Andrew Lowe
http://www.lostways.com
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