The founders of the eGold money transfer service, beloved of cybercriminals everywhere, are going to jail. They made the mistake of staying in Florida rather than fleeing the country and relinquishing their U.S. citizenship.
I am of two minds here. First, it is clear that the eGold service was used by a huge number of criminal enterprises to do really nasty things. The first example above, where it was used for extortion, is typical of many of the criminal uses that their service was put to. On the other hand, it was also a service that preserved privacy to an extent that had to be disconcerting to those within the U.S. government who want to know the contents of every financial transaction everywhere in order to spy on the citizenry looking for signs of dissent against their rule.
This penguin shall go off and meditate on this one for a while...
-- Badtux the Geeky Penguin
You may want to pick up a copy of "Little Brother" to get some ideas that Cory Doctorow has about our surveillance society. May not be your cup of tea (it's aimed at teens, but I can verify that an adult can enjoy it too). You can download it for free, or if you prefer the dead tree form (as I do), Amazon has it for sale -- plus with the free download option, you can try before you buy the dead tree version.
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