secretly shared data haven...

["Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>]

I've been thinking the other day, and I guess that in my cluelessness, many 
thought of it before me...

Here is my question anyway:

e-$ à la Magic Money requires an on line database containing information of 
each individual token.  Any such server system has to be closely guarded.

What about sharing the information on M servers where N < M and N/M < 1/2 are 
required to re-build the data?  How many servers would suffice to ensure 
security?  I'd say around a dozen in judicously choosen jurisdictions.

It would have several advantages:

First, although data is stored, nobody can know about what the data is.
Second, since the data is re-united only within somebody's machine, there is 
no tangible or even theoretical localization of the data, data becomes data 
only when the reunifications of the N parts happens.  Of course, it requires N 
times the storage space, but it defies all attempt to legaly define the 
"data".

I've been pondering several variations of such a system, one that used a 
storage location brooker, the other one with no storage location broker, and 
figuring out the security protocol required to prevent trafic analysis, client 
name partial divulgation, etc.

My conclusion is that the complexity and overhead of the system is quite 
large, but for small high-value data packets such as e-$, I have a hunch that 
it could be justifiable.

Anybody knows of scheme proposal similar to that?

Ciao

jfa


 " There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction." -Ayn Rand


"The government has no source of revenue, except the taxes paid by the producers.  To free itself -for a while- from the limits set by reality, the government initiates a credit con game on a scale which the private manipulator could not dream of.  It borrows money from you today, which is to be repaid with money it will borrow from you day after tomorrow, and so on.  This is known as "deficit financing."  It is made possible by the fact that the government cuts the connection between goods and money.  It issues paper money, which is used as a claim check on actually existing goods-but that money is not backed by any goods, it is not backed by gold, it is backed by nothing.  It is a promissory note issued to you in exchange for your goods, to be paid by you (in the form of taxes) out of your future production." 
-Ayn Rand