From: Scott Brickner <sjb@universe.digex.net>
Date: Sat, 1 Jun 1996 11:39:05 +0800
To: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Subject: Re: Remailer chain length?
In-Reply-To: <199605282112.QAA03652@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-ID: <199605311956.PAA25321@universe.digex.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Jim Choate writes:
>> It's better than nothing.  And besides, the more remailers there are, the
>> more difficult it is to do traffic analysis on remailer traffic.  Actually,
>> its the more remailers people chain messages through, but there are software
>> packages that can do this easily.  The more remailers there are, the longer
>> remailer chains have the possibility of becoming.
>
>If this is strictly true, why not simply run several instances of a remailer
>on the same machine. Then randomly chain them prior to sending them off
>site. This would be a lot cheaper and faster than trying to convince
>hobbyist to set it up or businesses to to use their profit & legal council.

Because it's not strictly true.  Implicit in traffic analysis is looking
at the "envelopes" of the traffic.  Since this means intercepting those
envelopes, once you've put your monitor on the first remailer at a site,
you've probably gotten all the rest at the site for free.

I don't think multiple remailers at the same site help anything.