From: Pierre Uszynski <pierre@shell.portal.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 95 16:05:01 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Remailing pricing and cover traffic
Message-ID: <199501120004.QAA24479@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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We have been debating payment systems for remailers under the
following assumptions:

a) Reliable remailers will have to justify professional management
by making money for their owners.

b) End-of-chain remailers will need to make money to cover for
their legal expenses.

c) Payment would limit abuse.

I already countered the last point. Let me try to deal with the first
two to conclude that many professionally run remailers may very well
stay free or close to that for a long time:

Remailers are only one of many kinds of businesses that have been
described on this list. Others will include reputation markets,
near-traditional banking systems, stamp issuers, certification
agencies, data havens etc... But we have also seen that nearly all
other forms of businesses already now cannot but run afoul of a
tentacular law at some time or other. We have concluded that many of
these businesses would migrate to cypherspace, hiding their locations,
owners, books, assets and other information too dangerous to keep in
the open.

Each such organisation will generate lots of traffic, in part under
control of whoever is trying to do business with it. So they are
potentially easily traceable and subject to legal or violent
consequences.  A possible solution is of course for their sites to be
remailers too. Lots of non-descript remailers, trading lots of
encrypted traffic, a lot of it remailer management info and bogus
filler traffic.  When you are one of many, and people correspond with
you only through limited traffic anonymous response blocks, then the
remailers help you stay hidden by providing cover traffic.

But for this to work you must consistently attract a lot of cover
traffic through your remailer(s). If others undercut your stamp price,
or best your reliability status, you are in trouble because traffic
will migrate to other more competitive remailers, and you will be left
dry on the sand with the task to generate believable cover traffic
yourself. You are also competing with the cypherspace customers hiding
their own personal traffic under cover of "everyone-a-remailer"
remailers.

It may well be much simpler for cypherbusinesses to stay competitive on
the "middle" remailer market, even at a loss, and to transmit volumes of
believable (because real) cover traffic. End-of-chain (or more
precisely "clear-text") remailers can be expected to be a minority as,
after all, they are only needed to post to public forums. Maybe these
will charge a fee. For the others, the most and biggest "porn GIFs" go
through (even for free), the better...

However, large free remailers may then arise suspicion: There is little
reason to run a heavy traffic remailer for free, apart from getting
cover traffic. Competition may then settle at a small price, far from
enough to keep the remailer running, but enough to not be too
conspicuous. Or better, non-profit remailers may become ubiquitous,
being used in part to provide cover traffic and in part to transfer
money from the cypherspace businesses to cover for the cost of the
computers and obvious living expenses.

Between cypherbusinesses, everyone-a-remailer operations, and a few
real non-profits, most remailing may stay close to free for a long
time.  Untraceable money will be useful for all kinds of things, but
maybe not so much for remailing.

Pierre.
pierre@shell.portal.com