From: nobody@eli-remailer
Date: Tue, 1 Jun 93 11:55:12 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: No Subject
Message-ID: <9306011855.AA08017@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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I don't think the idea of a "virtual server" for anonymity will really
accomplish much.  Even if you somehow manage to spread the software over
several machines, you still need to publicize the entry and exit points
for remailing requests.  If the net police determine to shut down the
server, they can go after those machines which are publically known to
be the places where the anonymous messages come from and shut them down.

Sure, if you have a network of machines you might be able to bring another
one online pretty quickly to replace this one which has been shut down.
But then the net police can go after that one.  And so on.

You'd get the same effect just by having a bunch of conventional remailing
servers, only announcing one of them publically, and then having each
one come online only after the one before it got shut down.

The hard part in either of these scenarios is collecting more people who
will run anonymity servers.  I don't see that doing tricky stuff with
virtualizing the calculations helps you much.

Similarly, trying to put a machine at an unknown site, or perhaps in a
friendly country, won't necessarily help.  If the machine itself is
inaccessible, the net police will go after its feeds, the points at which
it connects into the network.  Look at what happened to Julf.  His machine
was safe, sitting in a back room of his house.  They went after his net
feeds instead.

The real answer is to publically defend remailers.  I argue for remailing
servers on the basis of preventing traffic analysis.  Most people accept
that the use of encryption is justified for email in order to protect
individual privacy.  I claim that remailing servers extend this protection
to include not only the content of a message, but its destination as well.
The net does little today to keep the facts private about whom you communicate
with.  Remailers provide that confidentiality.

If we had enough remailers that we could confidentally run a virtualized
system, knowing that we could keep brining them online faster than they
could be shut down, I'd argue that a better use of those resources would be
to publically identify all of the remailers and let them all operate on
their own.  This would provide a united front to oppose the anti-privacy
forces, giving political strength to our goals.

Hal Finney 
74076.1041@compuserve.com

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