From: "George A. Gleason" <gg@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 93 03:37:01 PDT
To: mg5n+@andrew.cmu.edu
Subject: Re: Spread-spectrum net (vulnerability of)
Message-ID: <93Oct13.033350pdt.13932-3@well.sf.ca.us>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


RE your item, 

"a sort of virtual-space map, which would reveal
nothing about actual phyical location of the sites or the person you are
contacting."

I'm not so sure... in cellular systems, cells must know where the handsets
are located in order to send incoming calls.  Your transmitter has a
physical location which could presumably be tracked in the normal manner,
and I would expect the overall routing information in a net to be
susceptible to traffic analysis in any case.  An individual who is using the
system to communicate wouldn't be able to find the physical address of
another user, but e.g. an intelligence agency which was looking at the
entire network would.  Even assuming spread-spectrum and various link
encryption techniques on top of whatever end-user encryption is supplied;
with enough traffic and enough time, it should be possible to do TA.  

Or have I missed something....?

-gg