US government made bitcoin in order to consolidate power

yeah its been a spec i left on from before i had a few plays with it. sadly, i sold off most at aprox $100 -
would have about $2mm currently... your logic makes sense that there are more scenarios, higher
probability of those scenarios, and only one out of the events has to occur. it can only do about 5-10
transactions /second % expensive.
I would guess that even if everything goes right you still have legislative risk on multiple fronts.

While i was glancing over an IMF report on cryptocurency and bitcoin from jan 2016 Goldman Sachs
applied for a patent on its blockchain-based settlement system (SETLCoin)in late 2015.. what is so odd
is 20min ago i saw blankein basically shaking his head about bitcoin, how he doesnt know and cant
read the future. Mike bloomberg then starts talking about blockchain and telling blankfein how it could
change the banking sector and he still acts like goldman doesnt eve look at the technology. i read all
these kids thinking that the banking/ruling/plutocratic classs is finished, and its going to be utopia now.

There something that smells off to me. That new crypto curency gets formedpayment form gets started,
and we dont shut it down, but other countries do. Just one of the money grubbing politicians in the right
place would have to be given carot/stick. These people prob finessed this whole game plan; spoofed
right up to cyper punks and the anarchist then to the the tech ppl who dont like government/ banking
cartels bring it to the world and champion it - until the majority bids it up just in tuime for the fatf
Bitcoin transactions are not considered safe until after 6 transaction confirmation.

by killing off btc and integrating the central banking system into a cryptocurrency. Spoon feeding the
government-hating early adopters "decentralization' then the crowd bids it up to crazy amounts, and
you no longer have cash, and replacing USD as reserve currency.
"We are literally in a race between our ability to build and deploy technology, and their ability to build
and deploy laws and treaties. "Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big
Brother Obsolete" We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding
systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.

Huge poiny was taxes

"Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. When my identity is revealed by the
underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy.The obstacles are political -- some of the
most powerful forces in government are devoted to the control of these tools. In short, there is a war
going on between those who would liberate crypto and those who would suppress it.Though the
battleground seems remote, the stakes are not: The outcome of this struggle may determine the amount
of freedom our society will grant us in the 21st century. To the Cypherpunks, freedom is an issue worth
some risk.
The FATF’s “guidelines” of bitcoin are predicted to have the same effect as BitLicense had on New
York-based bitcoin startups – this time on a global scale.Despite the report’s persistent connection of
bitcoin to money laundering and terrorist financing cases, the report does point out positive usages and
applications of the technology behind digital currencies.
"The FATF’s “guidelines” of bitcoin are predicted to have the same effect as BitLicense had on New
York-based bitcoin startups – this time on a global scale.Despite the report’s persistent connection of
bitcoin to money laundering and terrorist financing cases, the report does point out positive usages and
applications of the technology behind digital currencies."
Then some criis will ocurr and they will claim that all the other currencies and soverign bodies are
stagnatng the currency - put most of the world thru a harsh depression first so the ey are ready to take
any solution.

International bodies have a role to play in strengthening the international community’s

understanding of VCs more broadly. Several international bodies have already issued reports on
VCs and have served as international fora for discussion (for example, the FATF, the Committee
on Payments and Market Infrastructures in Basel, the European Commission, the European
Central Bank, and the World Bank).FATF has issued guidance to member jurisdictions on the manner
in which national
AML/CFT frameworks should be applied

The FATF’s “guidelines” of bitcoin are predicted to have the same effect as BitLicense had on New
York-based bitcoin startups – this time on a global scale.Despite the report’s persistent connection of
bitcoin to money laundering and terrorist financing cases, the report does point out positive usages and
applications of the technology behind digital currencies.

kThe G-8 and G-20 endorsed pursuing the “5×5 objective,” which aims to reduce the global average
cost of sending
remittances from about 10 percent in 2009 to 5 percent in

David Chaum was the most notable early champion of the Cypherpunks’ goal of realising a digital
currency in ‘Digicash’. In some ways, Digicash was a spectacular failure, sometimes unfairly attributed
to Chaum’s greed; but in the best ways, its failure was instructive because it demonstrated perfectly that
a privately issued digital currency could not survive the legal system’s onslaught of regulations (AML
and KYC in particular). Exactly the same story has been seen being played out again and again, with e-
gold’s failure, whose CEO Douglas Jackson narrowly avoided being sent to jail, and more recently with
the Liberty Reserve Dollar and Arthur Budovsky‘s arrest.

US government’s use of FISA, the ‘Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’ of 1978 (amended much
since 9/11) which effectively enables the US government to make requests for information about a
private company’s data.

In April 2013 a study from the university of Chicago released a document which concerned how the
IMF could potentially address the threat that Bitcoin now poses to the global economy in its capacity to
launch speculative attacks on national currencies. The technicality is that they (the IMF) cannot buy
Bitcoins because it is a stateless currency, and according to their articles of association they can only
hold reserves of state-backed currencies. This is a dilemma for the IMF, and puts them directly at odds
with the Cypherpunks’ politics, which is precisely the point.
“if the invention is antithetical to big government and government issued money, but I have read very
few critiscisms of bitcoin from ‘the Establishment’ other than Paul Krugman’s famous dismissal of it. I
think generally the community nexus of socially inclined economists would say that a deflationary
currency is unworkable and/or undesirable, and I would tend to agree with them up until the point
where the elasticity of the bitcoin system is spread to thinly that deflation slows to 1% a year… at
which point it may well become a viable ‘currency’ rather than what it is at the moment, a sort of tech
stock cum commodity item.”
The European Central Bank classifies bitcoin as a convertible decentralized virtual currency.[6]:6 In
July 2014 the European Banking Authority advised European banks not to deal in virtual currencies
such as bitcoin until a regulatory regime was in place.

The U.S. Treasury classified bitcoin as a convertible decentralized virtual currency in 2013.[28] The
Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC, classified bitcoin as a commodity in September
2015. Per IRS, bitcoin is taxed as a property.[29]
In September 2016, a federal judge ruled that "Bitcoins are funds within the plain meaning of that term
Thus, if I were a government that saw Bitcoin as a threat, I would try a three-pronged attack:
(1) Attack, using anti–money laundering laws, etc., the entities that allow Bitcoin to interface with the
"real" (non-Bitcoin) world. That is, USD–Bitcoin exchanges, people who have a real-world address to
ship things from, stuff like that. You may not be able to attack the part of the Bitcoin system that lives
entirely in the Internet, but you can cut off any appendages that reach into meatspace (to use a term that
I really don't like). In his answer, Stephen Gornick points out that this is already occurring.
(2) Try to destabilize the value of Bitcoin. So perhaps buying a bunch of Bitcoin over time, and then
selling them all at once, causing market crashes. Or buying and hoarding Bitcoins. Free from all the
laws designed to prevent market instability in the real world, a powerful, rich, hostile government could
probably do quite a bit of damage to the Bitcoin *economy*, even if they can't actually touch the
technical foundation of the cryptocurrency itself.
(3) Finally, attack the *image* of Bitcoin. Publicize the hell out of its uses for hard drugs, child
pornography, assassination markets, etc. Fabricate a case if you have to. Get it embedded in the average
person's mind that Bitcoin = Currency for Criminals.
The IRS in the USA, asks from any business in the world to file all transactions with US citizens. The
result? All small companies that cannot afford the bureaucratic costs, just stopped accepting orders
from USA. The loser? The residents, because they cannot buy things that people from other countries
can. European Union asks from any business in the world to send VAT to the state of the client. The
result? Many businesses do not sell goods to EU member states. The loser? EU residents, that cannot
buy things that people of other countries can.
For now, physical cash can be used as a middleman. Bitcoins can store value making full use of their
intrinsic properties such as personal storage on wallets and free international transfers, and when an
owner wants to convert the market value of Bitcoins into goods and services, they can sell their Bitcoin
for cash. However as Modi’s India has demonstrated, demonetisation of the economy is not impossible
and the world is generally moving towards cashless / card-based systems. This allows all financial
actions to be tracked by the banks they pass through and gives judiciaries a port-hole into any-and-all’s
financial lives.

Super power entity buys the core developers and stalls the coin. There will be eventually better tech
from another team. People move to better tech. Shut down operation fails.
• Super power entity grabs much of the stake if it is a PoS coin. Votes the currency and trolls it.
This is the costliest option probably because entity will be staking its own investment. People
move to PoW/PoS hybrid or a better tech. Shut down operation fails because it is too costly.

And when it comes to USG, and USD - creating a successful distributed digital currency is what I call
"coup-complete." Ie, as a difficult problem, it is fundamentally equivalent to the well-known difficult
problem of regime change. Are coups impossible? No, of course not. What's impossible, however, is
pulling a coup when you don't know you're even trying to pull a coup.

Advances in Cryptology — CRYPTO ’93: 13th Annual International Cryptology – maany

issues as well as stephan brands and “untraceble offline cash

(whitepaper inAdvances in Cryptology — CRYPTO ’93: 13th Annual International Cryptology

Bitfinex – look into who bankrolled them.Tether is an unregulated cryptocurrency pegged to the US
dollar. Tether is closely associated with Bitfinex.
why didnt regulators step in beforehand? Did they have pressure to keep it alive?
Dont think they will crash btc until society has come around to btc atm’s and using it – so they
will prob try to keep it stable as well as the occational run up.
Chicago fed economist “blockchain is elegant solution to the problem of creating digital crrancy.
Get rid of cash – give central bank more surveillence andstop theuntaxable black markets..
Gold & other metals wil likely get pushed down real low right before bitcoin falls and rothchilds
will be buying
author makes good point that with digital currency you cant have bank runs, can implement any
interest rate, and government can tax society however it chooses-always wondered what would
plan be so US didnt default on their debt.
Society needs to rise up and demand we take over our central banking and to not pay the fed.
Learn more about the first few ppl who introduced the idea of bitcoin
delve into when the government seized the gold
other central banks already issuing these?
The countries we invaded – the couple htat did not have central banking?
Author recomends liquidating into cash – but what happens when the government does not allow
you to own cash? If banks will no longer take it etc? It will be worthless-well I assume the banks
will let u deposit at a bad rate.

His chapter 4 – 4 worst sectors to be in:

1. selling products that arenot needed. Jewelry. Car. Business that rely on consumer debt.
Airlines. Homebuilders because rely so much on credit.
I think a good sell would be many of the high valued tech stocks esp ones that survive off add
revenue.
But stocks that sell a product ppl need. Agriculture. Buy land with water?
But solid businesses that will do ok in downturn when they sell super cheap. Grahams security
analysis. Archor-daniel-midland is an ag biz that sells cheap food
if I buy a leveraged short index, could I even liquidate the position?

1 ounce gold coins might come in handy as a bartering tool during a crisis. If they don’t, they’ll
serve as a form of wealth storage in the new modern age of digital wealth.Reputable dealers
include Apmex, Gainesville Coins, and Border Gold.
If you’re just starting out, we recommend avoiding collectable coins,also known as
“numismatics.”Here’s the real trouble with numismatic rated coins: you must paysignificantly
more for them than regular coins. You’re getting thesame amount of gold, but numismatics cost
more because of theircollectible value.By buying at a locally owned jewelry store. These stores get
a fecommon gold coins in every week. If you know what you’re lookingfor, it’s a great way to buy
gold with cash.
Silver:
The most common silver coins are1 ounce American Silver Eagles and 1 ounce Canadian Silver
MapleLeafs. Like the government-minted gold coins we discussed earlier,these silver coins are
instantly recognized anywhere in the world.
Junk silver is common U.S. coinage—like old quarters and dimes—that contain 90% silverBut
this creates a huge opportunity for savvy investors because coincollectors don’t see a lot of value
in junk silver.This allows you to buy these types of coins at much smaller premiumsthan
something like Silver Eagle coins.This is why junk silver is perfect. It comes in dimes, quarters,
half-dollars, and dollars.
Other assets that will likely have mad value? Guns and bullets.Just like with gold coins, you can
buy silver online or with a local
dealer.
One market that’s set to create a fresh pack of millionaires right now
is the gold mining and silver mining sectors.If gold goes to $5,000, $10,000, or higher like we
think it could,
owning gold can also make you a nice profit. But you can also make
profits—potentially much larger profits—in the mining sector that
produces gold and silver.Pick #1: Franco-NevadaIAMGOLD (IAG) is one of the best mid-tier
gold miners we follow.
In a gold bull market, a mid-tier company tends to move higher faster
than the largest firms, known as “majors.Pick #3: First Majestic Silver (AG)

In more recent times we’ve had...

Source: Wikipedia
• The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913
• Roosevelt confiscating gold back in 1933
• Johnson taking silver out of U.S. coinage in 1965
• And, finally, Nixon devaluing the dollar and cutting it loose
from gold back in 1971.
19 countries around the world right now have implemented negativeinterest rates—with more
yet to come.
Now, one cannot predict with 100% accuracy how a situation like this
will unfold...Will they keep the current U.S. dollar and introduce Fedcoin as a second
alternative currency?Will they ban the current U.S. currency outright or perhaps just stop
circulating large bills?Or maybe they’ll simply convert our current money supply onto the
blockchain “in the name of national security” and gradually remove all
paper currency.
But what we do know is this: Never in the history of the world has a
“fiat,” paper-only currency like the U.S. dollar survived. Most have a
lifespan of 30–40 years.

www.caseyresearch.com/products/the-casey-report.
simons(the math hedge fund):
In 1955, when Simons was seventeen, he enrolled at M.I.T. and fell in love with mathematics. He
received his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley, when he was twenty-three. Soon, he was working at the federally
funded Institute for Defense Analyses, in its élite cryptography group, which is based in Princeton.
“Our job was to break other countries’ codes and to design our own,” Simons said. “I was lucky enough
to do some very good mathematics while I was there, and I enjoyed coming up with an algorithm and
seeing it tested on a computer. I couldn’t program to save my life, but I did solve a long-standing
problem in the field.” (He could not discuss that work, he said, because it remains highly classified.)
He was fired from the I.D.A. in 1968, After his departure, Simons was named the head of the math
department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His chairmanship coincided with the
era of Nelson Rockefeller, the ambitious governor of New York, who wanted the school to be the
“Berkeley of the East.” Under Simons, the department expanded and gained in prestige. “He already
was a combination of ringleader and master of ceremonies and energizer,” Tony Phillips, a
mathematician who worked with Simons, recalled. While Simons was at Stony Brook, he won the
Veblen Prize, one of America’s top math honors, for work in differential geometry, the study of surfaces
and their shapes in multiple dimensions. He also collaborated with Shiing-Shen Chern on the Chern-
Simons theory. “Yeah, I was a good mathematician,” he said. “I wasn’t the greatest in the world, but I
was pretty good.

IDA’s support of the National Security Agency began at its request in 1959, when it established the
Center for Communications Research in Princeton, New Jersey. Additional requests from NSA in 1984
and 1989 led respectively to what is now called the Center for Computing Sciences in Bowie,
Maryland and to a second Center for Communications Research in La Jolla, California. These groups,
which conduct research in cryptology and information operations, comprise IDA’s Communications
and Computing FFRDC.
In 2003, IDA assumed responsibility for the Science and Technology Policy Institute, a separate
FFRDC providing technical and analytic support to the Office of Science and Technology Policy and
other executive branch organizations.[9]
Cost Analysis and Research Division (CARD) helps guide the Department of Defense and other
federal agencies in the decisions, policies, and processes of resource – both people and money –
allocation. Specifically, CARD analysts engage in:
Information Technology and Systems Division (ITSD) focuses on cybersecurity and other
cyberspace challenges of national and global importance. ITSD researchers address all aspects of cyber
from the perspectives of cyberspace operations, technology, and policy/law, and where these
perspectives intersect. In particular, ITSD concentrates on these areas:
• Providing expertise on critical cyber technology procurements via in-depth knowledge of
the technology and modern methods for timely acquisition of technology that matters.
• Assessing advanced concepts in rapidly changing cyber technologies while identifying
and analyzing cyber risks.
• Analyzing the workforce to determine if they are ready for cyber challenges and
developing training and education programs to ensure we are ready for future cyber
challenges.
• Applying world-class talent in content understanding by analyzing Big Data to bring
clarity to a world drowning in data

Intelligence Analyses Division (IAD) provides the United States Department of Defense, the
Intelligence Community, and other cabinet departments research and analyses across a wide array
of intelligence issues and disciplines. Specific examples of support to our national security
include research in the following vital areas:
• Countering terrorism, including how terrorist organizations are financed; examining
issues unique to Asian counterterrorism; and following developments in improvised
explosive devices worldwide
• New technology, such as the use of tagging, tracking, and locating (TTL) systems,
including the ability to defeat such systems, and measurement and signals
intelligence (MASINT) applications, which deal with metric, angle, spatial,
wavelength, time dependence, modulation, plasma, and hydromagnetic data
• Surprise technology – unanticipated technologies that might be employed against
the U.S. by adversaries as the result of either scientific breakthroughs or novel
applications of existing technologies.
• Cyberspace operations – tracking, analyzing, and countering digital security threats
and identifying and tracking those developing, selling, and using cyber weapons on
a global basis.

Center for Communications and Computing

In 1959, IDA’s Center for Communications and Computing[14] was formed (as the Communications
Research Division) as a private think tank dedicated to helping the National Security Agency solve
advanced cryptology problems.[15] It was headed by Cornell professor of mathematics J. Barkley
Rosser (1958–61); University of Chicago mathematics chairman Abraham Adrian Albert (1961–1962);
University of Illinois/Sandia Corporation mathematician Richard A. Leibler (1962–1977); and
Princeton mathematician Lee Paul Neuwirth (1977-unknow
the research portfolio particularly focuses on the creation and analysis of sophisticated encryption
methods, high-speed computing technologies, the development of advanced algorithms and their
applications, algorithmic and mathematical foundations of cryptology, computer network technologies
supporting communications security, information processing technologies supporting cyber security,

Nonetheless, NSA analysts Mildred Hayes,

Angela Nanni, and Janice Cram continued their cryptanalytic work
right up to the end of the project.He used deciphered Soviet cables to build cases against numerous
spies, most notably Klaus Fuchs—a German-born British physicist who was convicted in 1950 for
having given vital atomic-research secrets to the Soviet Union—and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who
were found guilty of having passed military secrets to the Soviets and executed in 1953.

They designed a cipher called Lucifer. In 1973, the Nation Bureau of Standards (now called NIST) in
the US put out a request for proposals for a block cipher which would become a national standard.
They had obviously realized that they were buying a lot of commercial products without any good
crypto support. Lucifer was eventually accepted and was called DES or the Data Encryption Standard.
In 1997, and in the following years, DES was broken by an exhaustive search attack. The main problem
with DES was the small size of the encryption key. As computing power increased it became easy to
brute force all different combinations of the key to obtain a possible plain text message. In 1997, NIST
again put out a request for proposal for a new block cipher. It received 50 submissions. In 2000, it
accepted Rijndael, and christened it as AES or the Advanced Encryption Standard. To conclude, history
teaches us:
1. The secrecy of your message should always depend on the secrecy of the key, and not on the
secrecy of the encryption system. (This is known as Kerckhoffs's principle.)
2. Related to the above, always use ciphers which have been publicly reviewed and have been
established as a standard. Using "secret crypto" is bad, because just like the Caesar cipher, once
the system is known, all messages can be decrypted. For example, if your key is compromised,
an attacker could access your messages; however, if the attacker can compromise the crypto
system itself, they can obtain the plain text of every message (not just for a single person)
encrypted by that system.
“he is a genius on a lot of dif layers, which I think is really rare”
“one interesting thing that came out recently that indicate a 90s era cryptogrpher was working
on some of this stuff.

"Computer Security This collection contains images of the National Institute of

Standards and Technology’s (NIST) early work in computer security. Instructed by
the Computer Security Act of 1987 to receive and review Federal security plans for
unclassified but sensitive information, NIST and the National Security Agency
 immediately initiated the Computer Security and Privacy Plans (CSPP) review
project. The team found considerable uncertainty among the agencies regarding
the most effective means to provide for secure computer operations; thus, team
recommendations focused on education.”
http://nistdigitalarchives.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/atozlist

The Trade Act of 1988 created the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from the
National Bureau of Standards (NBS). In addition to explicitly defining and reconfirming the traditional
measurement services, the law assigned new responsibilities to NIST to assist U.S. industry in
capitalizing on new technologies developed in the U.S. scientific and technical community at a faster
rate. This article describes the new programs being established at NIST to comply with this mandate
and the new organizational unit at NIST that brings together the traditional services and these new
programs. 1990 extract – it was like they felt a rush all of a sudden.
Written in cypher punk meail lst: “2.5.13. "Did the NSA know about public key ideas
before Diffie and
Hellman?"
+ much debate, and some sly and possibly misleading innuendo
- Simmons claimed he learned of PK in Gardner's column, and
he certainly should've been in a position to know
(weapons, Sandia)
-
+ Inman has claimed that NSA had a P-K concept in 1966
- fits with Dominik's point about sealed cryptosystem boxes
with no way to load new keys
- and consistent with NSA having essentially sole access to
nation's top mathematicians (until Diffies and Hellmans
foreswore government funding, as a result of the anti-
Pentagon feelings of the 70s)
2.5.14. "Did the NSA know about public-key approaches before Diffie
and Hellman?"
- comes up a lot, with some in the NSA trying to slyly
suggest that _of course_ they knew about it...
- Simmons, etc.
- Bellovin comments (are good)”

“Years before, when David Kahn had written his monumental history of cryptology, the agency had
considered placing him under surveillance and conducting a “surreptitious entry” into his Long Island
home to steal the manuscript prior to publication. Decades earlier, after Herbert Yardley wrote about
the Black Chamber, the predecessor to NSA, the Justice Department actually did steal the manuscript
for his second book, preventing it from ever being published.”
Stefan Brands ecash papers-
http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/people.htmlhttps://idtrail.org/content/view/55/43/index.html
Dr. Stefan Brands is the founder and president of Credentica, a Montreal-based startup that delivers
innovative identity and access management solutions. He holds a Ph.D. in cryptography from Technical
University of Eindhoven and a M.Sc. in mathematics from University of Utrecht. Stefan is an Adjunct
Professor in modern cryptology at McGill's School of Computer Science. In this capacity he co-
supervises several M.Sc. and PhD students who are conducting cryptographic research in the area of
digital identity and privacy. Stefan is a principal member of "On The Identity Trail" as well as of
ADAPID, a Belgian R&D consortium that is designing a next-generation ID chipcard. Prior to joining
Credentica, Stefan was a senior cryptographer at two pioneering privacy technology companies: Zero-
Knowledge Systems (anonymous data transport) and Digicash (electronic cash). Stefan served in 2004
and 2005 on the external advisory committee of the Federal Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and is
the author of a book on multi-party secure electronic authentication, published by The MIT Press with a
foreword by prof. Ron Rivest. (Available for download from
www.credentica.com/the_mit_pressbook.php.) In the early nineties, Stefan designed the core e-cash
protocols of a chipcard system that was implemented and piloted by two European consortiums that
included Gemplus, Siemens, and several European banks. Stefan maintains a personal blog on identity
management and privacy at www.idcorner.org.
Stefan Brands serves as Scientific Advisor of Trustifi Inc. Dr. Brands founded Credentica Inc., in 2002
and serves as its President and Chief Executive Officer. He is an internationally recognized
Cryptographer and his work focuses on privacy. The major areas, he has worked on include private
cash, for online and offline use and privacy-enhancing credential systems to replace current PKI
designs. From February 1992 to February 1996, Dr. Brands was affiliated with the Center for
Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI) in Amsterdam. His research during this period focused on
the design of privacy-protecting electronic cash systems and resulted in a number of publications. The
electronic cash system, he published in 1993 forms the core of a full-fledged system implemented and
tested by CAFE, an ESPRIT project with 13 academic and commercial member organizations from
seven European countries. Dr. Brands has presented his work for many institutions and companies
including MIT (Boston), ETH (Zurich), ENS (Paris), AT&T (New Jersey), IBM (Zurich), Johan
Wolfgang Goethe-University (Frankfurt am Mainm), and the University of San Diego. From 1996 to
mid-1998, Dr. Brands pursued several commercial opportunities related to his technology, and
performed consultancy in the area of electronic cash. Following this, Dr. Brands spent a year working
on his thesis and a book on electronic cash. Dr. Brands' thesis "Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures
and Digital Certificates -- Building in Privacy" dealt with the much broader topic of privacy in
electronic communication and transaction mechanisms, and was written completely from scratch. It
describes techniques that are generalizations, extensions, or improvements of Dr. Brands' electronic
cash techniques, as well as an array of completely new privacy and security techniques. He is the
Owner of eight international patents on electronic cash and digital certificates. In February 2000, Dr.
Brands joined Zero-Knowledge Systems, a developer of Internet privacy and identity-management
systems, as Distinguished Scientist to further develop and implement electronic cash and private
credential systems for the online and physical worlds. He serves as an Adjunct Professor at the McGill
University School of Computer Science in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Brands completed undergraduate
degree in Mathematics at the University of Utrecht and received PhD from the Technical University of
Eindhoven in 1999. looks like he foundd credentica in 2002 but sold to microsoft in 08. did he work on
anything after that up til 2011?

References

1. Credentica web site. Credentica.com. Retrieved on 29 November 2011.

 2. Heath, William. (4 April 2008) Microsoft lines up with the good guys on identity tech. The
Register. Retrieved on 29 November 2011.
3. Bright, Peter. (3 March 2010) Microsoft open-sources clever U-Prove identity framework. Ars
Technica. Retrieved on 29 November 2011.
4. How DigiCash Blew Everything, NEXT magazine, January 1999
5. “Minting” electronic cash by David Chaum and Stefan Brands, in: IEEE Spectrum special issue
on electronic money, February 1997
6. Zero-Knowledge Systems: Press Release. Replay.waybackmachine.org (7 April 2000).
Retrieved on 29 November 2011.
7. Wall Street Journal: Zero-Knowledge Is Hoping to Cash In On Move to Anonymous Funds for
Web. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved on 03 October 20151.
Mr. Brands's doctoral thesis, from the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, attempts
to rethink the concept of digital certificates, a popular authentication technology that uses what code
makers call public-key encryption. Digital-certificate companies help verify the identity of Internet
users and merchants, issuing the equivalent of software keys that are automatically exchanged when
purchases are made through a Web browser.

The problem, Mr. Brands argues, is that certificate issuers store users' names and other personal
information that may be unnecessary for many transactions. He devised systems of more specialized
certificates that can help users disclose data more selectively. Users, for example, might get the
equivalent of a key from a government agency that verifies their age for the purpose of buying a movie
or joining an online discussion. But they can give that certificate along with a pseudonym, not their real
name or address.
Financial Cryptography Conference-Anguilla, British West Indies-February 22, 2000-Leading Internet
privacy and identity-management company Zero-Knowledge Systems announced today that Dr. Stefan
Brands, a top cryptographer who specializes in privacy, PKI, digital identity authentication systems and
electronic cash, has joined the company as Distinguished Scientist. Zero-Knowledge also gained
exclusive rights to the Brands patent suite - a collection of five issued patents and a suite of pending
privacy patents that represent the future of certified identity-management and electronic cash in the
online and offline worlds.
The patents make Zero-Knowledge one of only two companies capable of developing
cryptographically assured private and anonymous e-cash, and the only company with the technology to
offer it for both the online and offline worlds. In an increasingly networked world, where our homes,
cars and phones are connected, these patents will enable people to ensure privacy and flexibility in their
commercial transactions.
Dr. Brands' patents will empower people to manage their identity and conduct commerce in the online
and offline worlds without fearing loss of privacy. Unlike current authentication models such as PKI
and many early types of electronic cash, Dr. Brands' innovations add strong privacy protection and
enable easy transfer of personal credentials and electronic cash from the online world to the physical
and vice-versa. The Brands system will allow people to use a smartcard and PDA to authenticate
credentials or purchase goods with electronic cash, empowering individuals to disclose specific
credentials such as age or gender without revealing other information that could be collected into a
profile. http://www.zeroknowledge.com/media/pressrel.asp?rel=02222000

Several companies, notably a now-defunct venture called DigiCash Inc., worked on electronic systems
for allowing consumers to make payments anonymously. But those efforts foundered, as consumers and
merchants chose the
conhttps://web.archive.org/web/20000711011818/http://www.zeroknowledge.com:80/company/venienc
e of credit cards over anonymity. Undeterred, Zero-Knowledge unsuccessfully tried to buy DigiCash's
patents and then recruited one of its key technologists, a cryptographer named Stefan Brands who holds
five patents for electronic cash and credential systems.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB951173045490453639zero knowledge basically bought digicash by
hiring Brands.. Once the company was sold to microsoft, where did he work? Maybe he released
bitcoin anonmously because he didnt want to get hit with patent issues – and maybe it was microsofts
full idea to keep the tech in the dark.
Wiki for zero-knowledge: Zero-Knowledge Systems was one of the first large scale commercial
attempts to combine cypherpunk principles with a for-profit technology. During its heyday ZKS
captured the media's imagination and successfully drew attention to the privacy risks of unsuspecting
internet users.
Being based in Canada allowed it to circumvent US ban on strong cryptography, considered
"munitions" at the time. ZKS was featured in Wired magazine as early as 1999 [2]
The ZKS Freedom Network was a pioneer of anonymous networking technology, predating the Tor
network. Some of the enterprise privacy research was also inherited by the IBM Tivoli digital rights
management suite.[3]
Several of the company's employees were from an academic privacy-enhanced technology background:
Dr Stefan Brands (senior cryptographer) and cypherpunk background Dr Ian Goldberg (chief scientist)
and Dr Adam Back (architect & cryptographer). Other employees included Mike Shaver (chief
software officer), Adam Shostack, Anton Stiglic, Jonathan Wilkins and Ulf Moller.[4] Stephanie Perrin
served as Chief Privacy Officer for the firm before she became Director of Research and Policy at the
Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, and helped to draft PIPEDA, the Canadian privacy law
This confuses me, so he was the president of credentica, which sold its its patents to microsoft in 2008
and so did zero-knowledge?
March 6, 2008: Microsoft acquires U-Prove.
We are proud to announce that Microsoft has acquired our U-Prove technology, including all of the
underlying patents and our Java SDK. Microsoft aims to integrate the technology into the Windows
platform. (Note: Credentica will continue to be in operation.)
February 13, 2007: Credentica releases SDK.
We are announcing our first U-Prove product, a Java SDK for strong authentication and user-centric
data sharing. We will demonstrate the SDK and its application to government online at the 8th Annual
Privacy and Security Conference and Exposition in Victoria, BC.
"How does on-line clearing of anonymous digital cash work?"
- There's a lot of math connected with blinding,
exponentions, etc. See Schneier's book for an introduction,
or the various papers of Chaum, Brands, Bos, etc.

12.10.3. "why isn't digital cash being used?"

+ many reasons, too many reasons!
+ hard issues, murky issues
- technical developments not final, Chaum, Brands, etc.
+ selling the users
- who don't have computers, PDAs, the means to do the
local computations
- who want portable versions of the same
+ The infrastructure for digital money (Chaum anonymous-
style, and variants, such as Brands) does not now exist,
and may not exist for several more years. (Of course, I
thought it would take "several more years" back in 1988,
so what do I know?)
- The issues are familiar: lack of standards, lack of
protocols, lack of customer experience, and likely
regulatory hurdles. A daunting prospect.
- Any "launches" will either have to be well-funded, well-
planned, or done sub rosa, in some quasi-legal or even
illegal market (such as gambling).

o
when
IBM
researcher
Horst
Feistel
developed
a line
of
key
generators
to
be
embedded
in
IBM
computers
,
called
Lucifer,
there
was
no
immediate
use
for
it.

NSA
worked
closely
with
IBM
to
strengthen
the
algorithm
against
all
except
brute
force
attacks
and
to
strengthen
substitution
tables,
called
S.boxe
Scientists
charged
that
NSA
had
secretly
pressured
NBS
into
adopting
a
nonsecure
algorithm.
Not
only
did
they
contend
that
the
key
length
was
to
NSA's
liking,
they
.also
alleged
that
the
Agency
had
built
a
"trap
door"
i

.3. Personal Privacy and Collapse of Governments

- There seem to be two main reasons people are drawn to
Cypherpunks, besides the general attractiveness of a "cool"
group such as ours. The first reason is _personal privacy_.
That is, tools for ensuring privacy, protection from a
surveillance society, and individual choice. This reason is
widely popular, but is not always compelling (after all,
 why worry about personal privacy and then join a list that
has been identified as a "subversive" group by the Feds?
Something to think about.)
- The second major is personal liberty through reducing the
power of governments to coerce and tax. Sort of a digital
Galt's Gulch, as it were. Libertarians and
anarchocapitalists are especially drawn to this vision, a
vision which may bother conventional liberals (when they
realize strong crypto means things counter to welfare,
AFDC, antidiscrimination laws....).
- This second view is more controversial, but is, in my
opinion, what really powers the list. While others may
phrase it differently, most of us realize we are on to
something that will change--and already is changing--the
nature of the balance of power between individuals and
larger entities.

3.4.5. Why is there no formal agenda, organization, etc.?

- no voting, no organization to administer such things
- "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
- and it's how it all got started and evolved
- also, nobody to arrest and hassle, no nonsense about
filling out forms and getting tax exemptions, no laws about
campaign law violations (if we were a formal group and
lobbied against Senator Foo, could be hit with the law
limiting "special interests,"

3.4.8. Privacy, Credentials without identity

3.4.9. "Cypherpunks write code"

- "Cypherpunks break the laws they don't like"
- "Don't get mad, get even. Write code."
3.4.10. Digital Free Markets
+ strong crypto changes the nature and visibility of many
economic transactionst, making it very difficult for
governments to interfere or even to enforce laws,
contracts, etc.
- thus, changes in the nature of contract enforcement
+ (Evidence that this is not hopeless can be found in
several places:
- criminal markets, where governments obviously cannot be
used
- international markets, a la "Law Merchant"
- "uttering a check"
- shopping malls in cyberspace...no identifiable national or
regional jurisdiction...overlapping many borders...
+ caveat emptor (though rating agencies, and other filter
agents, may be used by wary customers....ironically,
reputation will matter even more than it now does)
- no ability to repudiate a sale, to be an Indian giver
- in all kinds of information....
3.4.11. The Role of Money
- in monetarizing transactions, access, remailers---digital
postage

conceivably)http://nakamotoinstitute.org/static/docs/cyphernomicon.txt
Gavin's visit to the CIA: https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=6652.0
Lets not forget his visit to the Council on Foreign Relations
ray dillinger and hal finney – do they have any weird affiliations?
3.3
Advanced
Technology
Program
(ATP)

The
Trade
Act
of
1988

Major legislation enacted during chairmanship

Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, Public Law. 97-34 (August 13, 1981). The 1981 Act encouraged
economic growth to the slumping economy by reducing individual income tax rates, permitting the
expensing of business investments, and increasing incentives for individual savings. Specifically, the
1981 Act
• reduced the top individual income tax rate to 50% and maximum capital gains rate to 20%.
• indexed all the income tax brackets, person exemptions, and standard deductions
• provided more rapid depreciation of business investments
• expanded the eligibility for individual retirement accounts (“IRAs”) and increased the annual
contribution limit to IRAs to $15,000.
• updated estate and gift taxes by permitting an unlimited marital deduction, increasing the estate
tax exemption to $600,000, and reducing the top estate tax rate to 50%.
Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, Public Law. 97-248 (September 3, 1982). The 1982
Act addressed the burgeoning budget deficit by raising revenue by approximately $100 billion. It was
the first of several critically important deficit-reduction bills enacted during the Rostenkowski
chairmanship. The 1982 Act accomplished this goal by eliminating many unintended and obsolete tax
incentives, and by strengthening the individual minimum tax on high-income individuals.
Social Security Amendments of 1983, Public Law. 98-21 (April 20, 1983). The 1983 Social Security
Act provided solvency for the social security system which was facing bankruptcy before the
enactment of this critical bill. Specifically, the 1983 Act secured the financial solvency of the Social
Security Trust Fund by providing a dependable stream of revenues to the Trust Fund and by
rationalizing the benefit structure including the retirement age determining benefit eligibility.
Interest and Dividends Tax Compliance Act of 1983, Public Law. 98-67 (August 5, 1983). The 1983
Act repealed the requirement for withholding on interest and dividends, replacing that system with a
system of “backup withholding” and expanded information reporting. The 1983 Act also enacted
various tax and trade incentives to encourage economic development in the Caribbean Basin countries.
(ha he keeps making problems then proposing bullshit solutions
Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, Public Law. 98-369 (July 18, 1984). The 1984 Act was another deficit
reduction bill driven by two main concerns: (1) the threat to the economy posed by increasing budget
deficits and (2) the erosion of the tax base due to the pervasive use of tax shelters. The 1984 Act raised
revenues by $50.7 billion over a four-year period. Specifically, the 1984 Act
• deleted a variety of tax provisions that were scheduled to take effect in 1984
• increased excise taxes on distilled spirits
• reduced various tax shelters used by corporations and businesses to inappropriately reduce their
taxes
• significantly reformed the taxation of life insurance companies to treat them more like other
corporations.
• reformed the taxation of U.S. persons working abroad and foreign corporations doing business
in the United States.
• reduced the holding period required to qualify for long-term capital gains taxation from one
year to six months.
Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986, P.L. 99-499 (October 17, 1986). The 1986
Superfund Act imposed taxes on polluting industries such as chemical and petroleum companies to
finance the cleanup of toxic waste sires and leaking underground storage facilities. Specifically, the Act
imposed taxes on chemicals, domestic crude oil, imported petroleum and other polluting fuels.
Tax Reform Act of 1986, Public Law. 99-514 (October 22, 1986). The 1986 Tax Reform Act was
“landmark” legislation, providing comprehensive reform of the federal tax system with the goal of
creating a fairer, more efficient, simpler, and more transparent system. It drastically reduced the number
of deductions and tax brackets. The sharp decrease in the tax rates applicable to individuals and
corporations meant that many other tax preferences (which benefited a small percentage of taxpayers)
were no longer necessary. Specifically, the 1986 Act lowered the top individual marginal tax rate to
28%; increased the standard deduction to $5,000 for married couples; increased the personal exemption
to $2,000; and increased the earned income tax credit (“EITC”). Capital gains were taxed at the same
rate as ordinary income.
Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, Public Law. 103-66 (August 10, 1993). The final deficit
reduction act of the Rostenkowski Chairmanship came with the enactment of the 1993 Act which
increased individual income tax rates and added two new brackets at the top of the earnings scale. The
Act also increased the tax rates for the alternative minimum tax (AMT), while increasing the corporate
tax rate to 35%. In addition, the gasoline tax was increased by 4.3 cents per gallon and the 2.5 cents per
gallon motor fuels tax was extended. The 1993 Act also increased the earned income tax credit (EITC)
and extended it to low-income single workers with no children.
Upon his return every Friday, Rostenkowski met with Mayor Richard J. Daley
In the early 1980s Rostenkowski successfully fought off repeated attempts to impose a transaction tax
on commodity traders at the Chicago Board of Trade, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the
Chicago Board of Options Exchange. Such a tax would have been fatal to the exchang

In January 1983 Plitt Theaters filed a lawsuit to obtain a permit to demolish the historic Chicago
Theater. Mayor Jane Byrne and other civic leaders appealed to Rostenkowski to assist them in
obtaining a federal Urban Development Action Grant to save the theater. Grants of this kind were being
frozen from Chicago by housing secretary Samuel Pierce in reprisal for Rostenkowski's opposition to
the Reagan administration's Urban Enterprise Zone bill.[32] Rostenkowski considered these zones a
Republican gimmick that would help businesses escape taxes without addressing chronic inner-city
unemployment. Rostenkowski called his friend Vice President George H. W. Bush, “If I don’t get that
grant, you're going to have one very pissed off chairman of the Ways and Means Committee for your
administration's pending tax bill”.[33] Shortly thereafter, Pierce phoned Rostenkowski to ask if he
could come up and see him. Sure, the congressman replied, just bring the papers for the theater project

tIn Chicago, he's Mr. Money and that's

's all that counts
March 04, 1994|By ROGER SIMON
CHICAGO -- "Money," Roman Pucinski is saying as Dan Rostenkowski takes the stage. "It's about
money."
Pucinski should know. He and Rostenkowski were both elected to Congress from Chicago in 1958.
While Rosty stayed to become chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Pucinski returned home
after 14 years to serve as an alderman, a seat he held until 1991.
Now, at age 74, his voice reduced to a whisper, he still helps out a friend in need, he still serves The
Machine."Dan Rostenkowski," Gidwitz says, "represents what's best about Chicago."
And what is that? I ask.
Gidwitz pauses. "He got us $35 million to help reroute Lake Shore Drive," he says.
Money. Even college presidents understand it.
Raymond LeSevour, president of Wright Junior College, where Bill Clinton spoke on Monday, told the
audience how the college had needed a new "environmental technology" curriculum.
"Coming up with the program was easy," LeSevour said. "But where do we get the money?"
Where? Where else?
"I went to Congressman Rostenkowski!" LeSevour said. "And we received the funds! Several million
dollars!"
Which is what education is all about, isn't it?
Bill Clinton understands the value of money. He certainly understands the value of the money that
Rostenkowski's committee controls, especially the money that will fund Clinton's health care reform
plan.
And we need health care reform, Clinton says, because if we don't get it, the country will run out of
money.
"And when we need another expressway in Chicago like Congressman Rostenkowski used to get for
us," Clinton said in his Monday speech, "there will be no money there!"
Even Rostenkowski, who has been smiling little these days, had to smile at that line. Where Chicago
would put a fifth expressway, he couldn't tell you. But as long as he is in office, there will be money for
one.
Which is Rostenkowski's entire campaign platform: I am the spigot through which the dollars flow. Get
rid of me and the spigot gets turned off.

Book - Rostenkowski: The Pursuit of Power and the End of the Old Politics. Was friends with kennedy,
tip oneal, clinton. His dad was an aldermon?

CODATA; conversion
factors; electrical
units; fundamental
physical constants;
Josephson effect;
least-squares
adjustment; quantum
Hall effect;
recommended values
of the constants; Task
Group on
Fundamental
Constants
We summarize the principal advances made in the fundamental physical
constants field since the completion of the 1986 CODATA least-squares
adjustment of the constants and discuss their implications for both the 1986 set
of recommended values and the next least-squares adjustment. In general, the
new results lead to values of the constants with uncertainties 5 to 7 times
smaller than the uncertainties assigned the 1986 values. However, the changes
in the values themselves are less than twice the 1986 assigned one-standard-
deviation uncertainties and thus are not highly significant. Although much new
data has become available since 1986, three new results dominate the analysis:
Abstract a value of the Planck constant obtained from a realization of the watt; a value
of the fine-structure constant obtained from the magnetic moment anomaly of
the electron; and a value of the molar gas constant obtained from the speed of
sound in argon. Because of their dominant role in determining the values and
uncertainties of many of the constants, it is highly desirable that additional
results of comparable uncertainty that corroborate these three data items be
obtained before the next adjustment is carried out. Until then, the 1986
CODATA set of recommended values will remain the set of choice.
http://cdm16009.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/p16009co
ll6/id/72599/rec/34

Kerckhoffs's principle