Earth Web Book

p3 Dealer fencing process:

(multiple) electronic identities.
Uses one for fencing operations.
Identities are unforgeable. (PKI should do that easily)
but identity could really be anyone. Dealer acknowledges risk of phony identity being set up by police, because Thief only has half-dozen past references. And that he normally wouldn't deal with someone with such a small track record.
Thief initiates deal by emailing from an identity.
Identities are tied to transaction histories on the web (on multiple sites? different market for each niche?). Dealer notes that "when dealing with criminals you have to use the trustworthy markets" (being those with complete/accurate references, vs those who can be bribed into deleting bad comments)
- histories don't seem to have any structure, or numerical ratings. Just use freetext. You evaluate someone by reading some reviews at random.
contracts include clauses to require other party to place comment online
you can post comments to comments. So you can counter a claim made by another person. Then it's up to dueling reputations in terms of who gets trusted.
even physical objects have electronic tie-in: truck carrying stolen goods has electronic control codes. When deal takes place, codes and cash are both held by escrow agent. At deal, truck codes are passed to Dealer, the Thief's codes no longer work.

p34: checking reputation of a reporter

shows list of past publications
says "pick an article at random, and read the comments about it, including those by the interviewee"
for angry commenter, follows links to other comments by the same person, showing him to be an always-angry idiot.

p65: bad reputation for old "reporters"

had "lost power with the advent of bidirectional reputation-endorsed public commentary via Web links"
interviewee forms contract with interviewer. Saying things such as interviewer will only publish under his own brand (under his identity, on his service instead of a "scam sheet")

p79: prize of fixed value set for invention of method of killing new machine. Prize given by Earth Defense?

lots more to summarize

Bill Seitz