There is new legislation in Louisiana that in certain cases prevents citizens from trading “legal tender” (specifically cash) for goods.

shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property

This will undoubtedly make its way through the federal court system and it will be interesting to follow, particularly in that the legislation applies to lawful transactions. There is no question to the lawfulness of the transaction, the law simply makes unlawful the trade of cash for goods in certain lawful transactions.

Read the article by Thad D. Ackel, Jr. Esq.

In addition to stifling business, the law includes a tangible attack on privacy. From the article liked above:

For every transaction a secondhand dealer must obtain the seller’s personal information such as their name, address, driver’s license number and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the goods were delivered.

There is a theme that this legislation adheres to which is making its way into many aspects of our lives (think airport security). It seems Uncle Sams’ believes it best to treat everyone as a criminal because someone is a criminal.

Situations like these always seem to bring me back to the simplicity of our founding fathers ideas of government. At the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801 he said:

a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

I love how simple that is and how it exposes our distance from it today. I corresponded briefly with Thad Ackel and promised I’d make this post and promote his efforts to see this legislation corrected.

This is likely the finest case for electronic privacy I have encountered and is worth reading.

A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto

by Eric Hughes

Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.

If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.

Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.

Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.

Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one’s identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.

We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor’s younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.

We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can’t get privacy unless we all do, we’re going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don’t much care if you don’t approve of the software we write. We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down.

Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation’s border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.

For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one’s fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.

The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.

Onward.

Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>

9 March 1993

You just cant get away from it these days. It is a constant tech media darling and every major tech service company is getting on board. I’m not necessarily completely against the concept but you must educate yourself on the terms of your service and what they really mean when participating. Be careful, the internet can be a dangerous place and I fear the “cloud” can be worse.

I came across a blog post this morning regarding the “cloud“. Admittedly, I didn’t read the whole post but I liked this comment by Jason Scott:

By the cloud, of course, I mean this idea that you have a local machine, a box running some OS, and a vital, distinct part of what you do and what you’re about or what you consider important to you is on other machines that you don’t run, don’t control, don’t buy, don’t administrate, and don’t really understand. These machines are connected via the internet, and if you have a company then these other machines are not machines run by your company, and if you’re a person they are giving it to you without you signing anything accompanied by cash or payment that says “and I mean it“.

Can I be clearer than that? It’s a sucker’s game. It’s a game suckers play. If you are playing it, you are a sucker.

P.S. Facebook IS the cloud too.

The last race weekend of the season was great. I got to the track around 7:30PM on Friday night and met Theo who was there all day for practice. We unloaded a few things from the trailer and hit the clubhouse for dinner. After dinner we finished a few things at camp and chilled out while fending off the mosquitoes. I was pumped about the racing that we would be doing the next couple days and had a tough time getting sleepy. I probably didn’t fall asleep until after midnight. We didn’t need the tent this weekend because Theo now has a cargo van as a toy hauler and camper so I stayed in my trailer. It was nice to not have to set up and take down the tent. The weather was a slight concern as the forecast was for 10%-40% rain/thunderstorms for Sat. and Sun. However, our optimism won out as there was completely dry track for both days. I practiced in the first session on Sat to clean out the cobwebs and then picked up the pace a bit in the second practice but came in early to save my strength and tires.

Saturdays first race was the LWSB make-up race that was rained out at the last event. It was a small grid since it was a make-up, I took 3rd place. The second race was the GTL 25 Minute race. To my surprise I held up well physically in that one. I was able to keep up a good pace until it was ended a few laps early by a red flag. I never saw the crash that ended it but word was the red flag was an overreaction and we could have finished. The rider was up an ok pretty quickly. We were well over the halfway point so the race was called and I finished 2nd. Race three was Thunderbike, I don’t remember much other than that I pulled a large gap on the group behind me but the leaders were far too gone for any chance to catch up in a sprint race. I just kept a comfortable pace and finished 4th.

I woke up Sunday a little hazy, kind of like I had sea-legs. I think it may have been a result of sleeping on the two inflatable beds stacked on one another. I skipped practice to save my strength and tires again. By the time lunch was happening my sea-legs were gone. Just as lunch ended the guy that bought my GSXR 750 showed up at the track to pick it up. I had loaded it and all the spare parts for it in the trailer in anticipation of consummating the sale this weekend. I was glad it worked out. I’m rid of a bike I was not using and have some extra room in my garage to work on some other projects. Race one was the ULWSB, I thought I had a good start but I was pretty much swallowed up between turn one and two. I wasn’t too worried though. As long as the leaders didn’t get too far ahead I figured I could make it up. I spent the first lap watching the field and making sure my tires were hot and then started making my way through. By the 4th lap I had passed everyone I could see. I wasn’t sure what place I was in but I knew there was no one else I could see to chase down so I focused on keeping whatever lead I had and finishing in one piece. It turns out the leader was long gone. I took second by a good margin. The video of that race is below. It is the first moto video I put to music, please forgive the song in the middle that drops the “F” bomb, I missed it when choosing the music. Race two was LWF40. Theo was putting the hex on me all day because he was just ahead of me in the points for the NJMP Championship and didn’t want we knocking him out of his second place position. I’m a bit superstitious sometimes but this time it didn’t work, I beat him and all else but one. I took second. Race three was LWGP. I had been leading this class going into the last round but sat out the last round due the weather. I think I was in 4th going into this round. On the previous out lap my bike started running terribly. It was like I was running out of gas. By now I was thinking that Theos’ hex kicked in or I had forgotten to gas up. Whatever it was it didn’t improve with fresh fuel so I limped and sputtered my way through as I watched two racers I beat earlier in the day take 1st and 2nd. I took 3rd in a race I could have taken 1st in. That was bitter-sweet. I contemplated sitting out the last race of the season due to the bike trouble. Theo and I tried to nurse it a bit in the pits and figured that if it was that bad I’d just quit early but that I may as well start. There were four of us on the grid. The bike never got better but didn’t worsen either. I was able to trade places with Theo a few times and we had some fun together. One of the racers in front of us low-sided in the left-hander on the backside and was out of the race. That left us in 2nd and 3rd. We did the last couple of laps that way and the healthier bike crossed the line first. That’s the first race we placed in together. I was really felling good about the season after that. We made all four weekends and had success on and off the track at every one. I think we both each only crashed once this season, Theo on oil in a race and me on an old front tire at a track day. The racing (barring two or three incidents by other riders) was clean and respectful and thrilling and challenging. I’m not sure how many races I ran in total but I placed 13 times with one 1st place. I came home and ribbed the boys a bit about how thy’re falling behind in the hardware acquisition, it got them pumped up and they tried to rebuff but they know the score. I’m winning. We’re hoping to get in a track-day weekend with TPM in October, If so, Ill post up some pictures. More race reports in 2012.