I don't see why everyone is so surprised Chaum took this side. He was already writing about this in 1982, quote "the new electronic payments system may have a

I don't see why everyone is so surprised Chaum took this side. He was already writing about this in 1982, quote "the new electronic payments system may have a substantial impact on personal privacy as well as on the nature and extent of criminal use of payments. Ideally a new payments system should address both of these seemingly conflicting sets of concerns." "an anonymous payments system like bank notes and coins suffers from lack of controls and security." "Ability... to determine the identity of the payee under exceptional circumstances." http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chaum.BlindSigForPayment.1982.PDF http://www.hit.bme.hu/~buttyan/courses/BMEVIHIM219/2009/Chau... Chaum had the same priorities for decades, so his position should be no surprise. The only thing that got worse is that unlike in DigiCash, where an organization could not unmask individuals alone, in PT, organizations can unmask individuals without their consent or participation in the process. Also, in DigiCash, the cryptographic protocol was separate from the receipts, so individuals could opt out of tracking altogether and still use the cryptography. In that system, to unmask a payee, an individual payer needed to collude with a bank and still be in possession of an optional receipt voluntarily provided by the payee. This is an adequate level of protection because it requires the consent of both individuals - the payee has to provide a receipt to the payer, and the payer has to provide that receipt to the bank. Anyway, Chaum has always been interested in deanonymization "under exceptional circumstances."