From: cactus@seabsd.hks.net (Todd Masco)
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 12:11:00 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Fundamental Question?
Message-ID: <199502012007.PAA13259@bb.hks.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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In article <199502011911.OAA09754@bwnmr5.bwh.harvard.edu>,
Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu> wrote:
>	Its awfully expensive to send messages all over creation so
>one person can read them.  Much better to send it to the person who
>wants to read it.  Besides, USENET propagation can be slower than
>remailers; the far ends of the chain can often take around a week.

1.  Let's have some perspective here.  Remailer traffic can't really be
expected to exceed the traffic in, for example, alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.
Additionally, with USENET it's trivial to control when are whether you
receive particular groups.  Don't want to carry alt.anonymous.remailer.channel?
No problem.  Don't.

2.  USENET propogation is not that slow;  Between well connected sites
(IE, just about any Internet host that isn't swamped for other reasons
like Netcom frequently is) I haven't seen a larger lag than a few hours.

The biggest reason to use remailers is not to avoid interception of
traffic: that's a trivial problem with PGP.  The biggest threat is that
of traffic analysis: Alice doesn't want her boss Charlie to know she's
having an ongoing discussion with Bob about a new "career opportunity."

As I've said, I think USENET is perfect for this.  Add some reordering to
the processing and a hidden way to define the intended recipients and no
way that passive traffic analysis is going to succeed.
- - --
Todd Masco     | "Schooling serves to reduce the risk of being eaten."
cactus@hks.net |                           - Scientific American, June, 1982
     Cactus' Homepage

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