From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 10:37:45 -0800 (PST)
To: vznuri@netcom.com
Subject: Re: Black markets vs. cryptoanarchy
In-Reply-To: <199611101939.LAA13170@netcom4.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <199611102130.VAA00658@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



Vladimir Nuri <vznuri@netcom.com> writes:
> an encrypted reply block using remailers is pretty secure technology.
> the remailers are not all that reliable however and these reply
> blocks are always breaking; they depend on every link in the chain
> working perfectly. I've proposed having an anonymous pool in which
> remailers post status information when they successfully pass on
> messages, such info could be used to make the remailers more reliable,
> although possibly at the expense of having to buffer messages.

Perhaps it would be feasible to provide in each hop of the reply
block, a second address to send errors to.  This could be a newsgroup
(alt.anonymous.messages), and a key to encrypt the error message with.
Looking at a.a.m now and then would then be sufficient to check on the
status of your reply blocks.

Bouncing messages to your own reply block to `ping' it, is another
way.

I'd like to see ways to have reply blocks which are more resilient to
single remailer failures, both transient failures, and remailers
decomissioning without warning.  My thoughts so far are that it may be
possible to acheive these goals by having a reply block secret split
across remailers, so that the chosen proportion, k of n remailers are
sufficent for your reply to get through.

> [...]
> it seems to me the main proponents of "cryptoanarchy" tend to suggest
> a government structure is a completely useless construction. perhaps
> so but they would end up erecting othre systems to deal with the
> void they might not call "govt" but would have most of the features
> of one, imho. something "govtlike" is a measure of a civilized society,
> imho, hence my distaste in cryptoanarchy with its seeming naivete
> on the legitimate and crucial role of govt in a society. the specifics
> may vary between implementations, but imho in general something
> "govtlike" is crucial to civilized society.

Perhaps you may to prefer to think about it in terms Harry Browne's
campaign slogans, about reducing government to 10% (or whatever).
It's not that easy to get rid of government all at once, and you'll
get to see how having less government works out in practice, as it is
shrinking.  You've got to admit government is too big, at least!

Adam
--
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