From: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Date: Sun, 5 May 1996 12:09:18 +0800
To: rjc@clark.net
Subject: Re: The Decense Project
Message-ID: <01I4BIYA0TSC8Y53GG@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From:	IN%"rjc@clark.net"  "Ray Cromwell" 10-FEB-1996 23:32:12.32

>The first piece of the Decense software is designed to provide "penet" like
>double-blind anonymous transactions for the http protocol. It is written
>as a cgi-bin script which provides a seamless mapping between anonymous
>ids and remote web servers. Servers running Decense can be chained like
>anonymous remailers to increase site level security.

[...]

>http://<decense.server.host>/<cgi-bin-dir>/decense/<anonid>/<relative url>

	I had one idea that you might want to keep in mind. Most web robots
(e.g., Altavista's) try to avoid cgi scripts. Since I would assume that one
would wish these to be indexed (information being available doesn't do much
good if nobody can find it), this could be a problem. Setting up as to fool
the web robots (especially making sure that the Decense urls aren't in the
site's robots.txt file) into thinking this is a normal page with an appropriate
link would appear to be a good idea.
	Now, of course the site running Decense would probably not like too
much traffic (the reason for most sites not running anonymizing proxies, which
should be combined with Decense), I would suggest that the system be set up
to receive ecash from the web sites linked (or from the user, although that
would remove the web robot access unless you could verify that it was a known
indexing robot.) The MarkTwain pickiness on merchants may be a problem on
this, depending on what links are available. One idea on getting around this
would be to go through the European bank offering ecash; I don't know if their
setup is compatible with the MarkTwain ecash, however. Lucky Green?
	Indeed, setting this up in a European country with good anti-censorship
laws would be preferable in any event; the Scandinavian countries might work
well. The greater tolerance for some such material in Europe is why I would
think that the European bank might be more flexible. (I would be curious if a
U.S. business could get a merchant agreement with the European bank; Lucky
Green?).
	-Allen