From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 18:25:49 +0800
To: enoch@zipcon.net
Subject: Re: Eternity (was Re: CPAC, XtatiX, and the Censor-State)
In-Reply-To: <19970729014252.9662.qmail@zipcon.net>
Message-ID: <199707291007.LAA00721@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




Mike Duvos <enoch@zipcon.net> writes:
> Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes:
> 
>  > You two must've been snoozing when I posted the Eternity
>  > service announce back in April.  I implemented something
>  > which does pretty much exactly what you're discussing.  I'll
>  > include a repost below.
> 
> I skimmed it.  "Eternity" makes me think of caskets and people in
> dark suits with expensive prices. :)

I "borrowed" the name from Ross Anderson I think it comes from
something called an eternity machine.  Perhaps a more descriptive name
would help?  USEWEB?  ALT web?  
(Have URLs of the form http://[host].alt/)

>  > So beyond implementing it, which I've done a first cut of,
>  > the next problem is getting people to use it, to advertise
>  > it so that people know it exists, to get people to put lots
>  > of "interesting" (= otherwise censored, so possibly pretty
>  > interesting) materials on it, so that people find it
>  > interesting to browse documents on it.
> 
> Hmmm.  I would certainly not want to be the only person running a
> server when the "interesting" materials got posted.

Yes, running an eternity server is going to have similar if not worse
operator harrassment problems than running remailers.  I've been
subscribed to remop <remailer-operators@anon.lcs.mit.edu> for a while
now, and remailer operators take no end of flak.

Once it gets going perhaps people can use their own personal eternity
server, a server for their own use only.  That at least directs
criticism to USENET admins, news archiving search engines, and
remailer operators (the exit remailers on the actual posts).

I'm confident that USENET can take the strain.  The average of
newsadmins doesn't honor cancels, and won't be bothered, or will be
hostile to the notion of canceling articles on the request of kooky
censors.  Search engines might be persuaded to delete posts from their
archives in the extreme.  I understand that the poster can request
posts removed from altavista.  Perhaps with enough harrassment
altavista might be coerced into removing other peoples posts.

The obfuscation of encrypting with pgp -c and password "eternity"
should help in that the documents are not directly readable.  At least
one of the search engines does not archive uuencoded posts.  It does
archive PGP radix-64 encoded posts.  Perhaps that would change if
censors created enough of a nuisance of themselves.

If they do stop archiving radix-64 we can switch to texto (crude text
stego app, which is kicking around the net somewhere).

> I'll see if I can get it to work.  Perhaps I can be Jim Bell's
> cellmate if things don't work out.  :)

Just view it as a temporary, disposable service.  When the heat gets
turned up to the stage where you receive bonafide legal letters,
disable it, and let someone else start some servers.  All the
documents will survive, as they live in USENET spools, and in search
engines USENET archives.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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