From: David Merriman <merriman@metronet.com>
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 94 21:33:07 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (cypherpunks)
Subject: Remailers
Message-ID: <199407040433.AA17963@metronet.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Grady Ward, over on alt.security.pgp/sci.crypt posted a little something
to the effect (I'm paraphrasing, here) that sending a couple meg of random
noise/bytes to an out-of-U.S. person/site would probably be a Good Thing
To Do.  The idea is that if each of us were to send out something like an
encrypted list of insults/profanity/noise, then the occasional *real*
message/file wouldn't stand out so much (plus have the added benefit of
screwing with the system in general). I realize that this is just fundamental
traffic analysis, but going through the list of remailers I've got, I could
see only a single non-U.S. (or at least, clearly identifiable as such) site.

Would it be completely out of line to ask if any of our non-US/Canada (or
Canada/US, if you prefer :-) subscribers would make available some kind of
Email drop to facilitate such activity?  It wouldn't have to be terribly
responsive, I wouldn't think - simply redirecting the appropriately
addressed mail to the bitbucket would be fine for the most part.  The
Really Motivated might take the file, rotate it left or right a bit, and
XOR it with the original of itself and send it back in some variable number
of chunks (or multiplied by 1/2 pi, or.....  anyway, you get the idea).

Incidental question: do the anon remailers do anything to erase any 
'ghost' images of data that has gone through them?  I mean, after they've
forwarded a message, do they do anything like wipe the scratch files, or
overwrite them with random data, or some similar bit-scrambling?  Or is
the traffic high enough that such measures don't have to be specifically
invoked?

Dave Merriman
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PGP Public Key Fingerprint for David K. Merriman <merriman@metronet.com>
PGP 2.6ui fingerprint  =  1E 97 E6 0F E0 EA D8 FE  0E C3 DC A7 F9 A5 06 66