🚀 go-pugleaf

On the effect of cryptography on crimes like insider trading:

	- There is one recent case on point.  Several major airlines
		were accused of colluding to fix prices.  They
		communicated by posting various articifical prices on
		the computerized reservation systems.  (The prices were
		"artificial" in that they were deliberately limited to
		such a small number of seats that they would have no
		significant impact.  What would happen is that one airline
		would post such a price as a proposal, and another would
		either respond by meeting the price - at which point the
		first would make the price widely available - or would
		refuse to respond, at which point the first would let the
		special offer expire.)

		This came out some time over the summer, as best I recall.
		I think the airlines agreed in a consent order that they
		wouldn't do anything like this, while denying they ever had.

	- The effect of anonymous re-forwarders, mixes, and such like things:
		I doubt they will have any significant effect, because I'm
		willing to bet that they will soon be outlawed.  Just as
		BBS's have found that it's extremely dangerous to provide
		unknown people with the ability to use them anonymously,
		the providers of forwarding services will, too.  Wait for
		the first case of anonymous slander through a forwarder.  Or
		the first widespread anonymous posting through a forwarder
		of viciously racist material.  Or of an extortion letter.

		A fundamental premise of the legal system is accountability.
		If you act to shield others from accountability, and they do
		something reprehensible, YOU will be called to task.

		(And don't quote the recent Compuserve case to me.  Compuserve
		isn't responsible for policing what is transmitted over its
		network - but it had better be reasonably able to identify who
		its customers are, if they use Compuserver for an illegal
		purpose.)

							-- Jerry