From: whitaker@dpair.csd.sgi.com (Russell Whitaker)
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 94 06:56:51 PDT
To: "Jim Sewell - KD4CKQ" <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: your mail
In-Reply-To: <9404071324.AA16386@Central.KeyWest.MPGN.COM>
Message-ID: <9404070653.ZM3717@dpair.csd.sgi.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Apr 7,  9:24am, Jim Sewell - KD4CKQ wrote:

[text elided for brevity]

>
> Another good use of this would be to maintain anonymity.  If you used the
> same aa382043 address over and over again people will attach an identity
> to that and they will remember, "Oh yes, that's the guy that said he works
> for a computer company and hates spinach and likes Amy and ...." and soon
> (assuming a long term use of the account) you will have an identity and
> people will be biased one way or another toward you, even though they do
> not know who you are in real life.  A one shot id will allow people to
> remain truly anon and not have to go to the trouble of switching accts
> and putting a burden on the remailers with 1000's of accounts.
>

[Apologies for not adding much more text in a reply than that in the original
   text.]

Jim has brought up a very interesting subject, which isn't discussed enough in
most of the places I look for such discussion: data inferencing.

A one-shot anonymous ID, besides having the certain immediately obvious
advantages - useful for preserving user anonymity, trouble in the event of
State seizure of the remailer, and lower sysadmin accounting load - makes
traffic analysis a somewhat more difficult affair.

Of course, one-shot anonymous user handles are of little use to the detweilers
of the net, who seem to return to the same places, again and again.  It doesn't
take much acuity to notice things like the use of, oh, say, TeX-format quote
marks in body text, as mentioned in a previous post by Tim May.

I shall, of course, refrain from using smilies to indicate humor.  I dislike
them, and would never use such an unsubtle mechanism to convey wry amusement.
 I prefer textual encoding.  Text is rich.

>
>-- End of excerpt from Jim Sewell - KD4CKQ

-- Russell, who cares not that he may - or may not - have just had himself
added
            to Detweiler's "Enemies List"

Medusa does not have tentacles.  They're snakes.  Snakes, I say!

--
Russell Earl Whitaker				whitaker@sgi.com
Silicon Graphics Inc.
Technical Assistance Center, Mountain View CA
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