From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 00:43:06 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Usenet and Re: extortion via digital cash
Message-ID: <199610210742.AAA15873@dfw-ix5.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> As an already existing, widely
>disseminated and easily used message pool, Usenet is very valuable to us.
>I'm concerned that it may not last though.  Many people now complain about
>how low the signal to noise ratio is [...] So, if it gets too bad, might it
>just fade away? Or, if it remains but becomes unpopular, will it be easy to
>restrict if we use it for anonymous messages?

I haven't read all of Usenet in 10+ years :-)  But it keeps growing,
and if you're trying to piggyback anonymous messages on it, then it's great
to have VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME, as the talk.bizarre folks put it.

On the other hand, there are technical difficulties with using the
current modes of Usenet for real applications, and volume may make it worse.
Usenet used to work by flooding - every message goes to every machine,
so it's not suspicious your machine receives an Anonymous Message.
Most machines had multiple users (Unix, after all), and didn't log who
accessed what files in the news spool (which you could do directly
as well as through your newsreader.)

Now, however, most users use NNTP to fetch news articles from their ISP,
and the number of machines receiving the whole Nx100MB/day flood is probably
smaller,
though perhaps businesses and universities are putting up with it,
and perhaps the usage patterns are different outside North America.
Fetching material by NNTP is probably logged by many ISPs, and can also
be detected by sniffers in the places where security is weak enough for them,
which probably includes many major ISPs.  So it's easier to detect who's
reading alt.anonymous.messages, especially if some government agency
subpoenas logfiles.

azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear) wrote:
>In the U.S., at least, attempts to enforce identification of Internet users
>or anonymous posters to newgroups and such are likely to meet with stiff
>legal resistance.  The Supreme Court has ruled that anonymous use of
>protected speech (e.g., political handbills) must be permitted.

No legal resistance at all, if it's done by ISPs or businesses or individuals -
only if the government tries it does it get into "protected speech" territory.
There may be market resistance, and the Internet and Usenet are fundamentally
worldwide cooperative efforts, so if the protocols support anonymity,
then participants in the nets can choose to have their systems cooperate with
or refuse to cooperate with anonymous messages, and you'll find some people
doing each one.  This may mean that small-ISP.net and xs4all.nl will permit 
anonymous users and aol.com, compuserve.com, and proxy.gov.sg will demand 
Internet Driver's Licenses to let your postings through, while nihilism.net
won't allow any non-anomymous messages.  Spontaneous order is like that.

And the US government could probably get away with sponsoring Internet
access for Real American Citizens and Green-Card Holders that requires
positive identification because you can file your tax forms over it,
as long as they don't prevent anonymous messages on _some_ part of the net.

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk
  Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_,
  and the politicians had to count them all.