From: "David D. W. Downey" <admin@cyberspacetechnologies.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 1997 17:05:07 +0800
To: Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>
Subject: Re: Eternity Uncensorable?
In-Reply-To: <19970812121230.24614@bywater.songbird.com>
Message-ID: <XFMail.970813044911.admin@cyberspacetechnologies.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




On 12-Aug-97 Kent Crispin wrote:
>>On Tue, Aug 12, 1997 at 12:46:02PM -0600, John Kelsey wrote:
>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>
>>[ To: cypherpunks@algebra.com, Wei Dai ## Date: 08/08/97 10:37 pm ##
>>  Subject: Re: Eternity Uncensorable? ]
>>
>>>Subject: Re: Eternity Uncensorable?
>>>To: Cypherpunks Lite <cp-lite@comsec.com>
>>>From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
>>>Date: Wed, 06 Aug 1997 11:33:55 -0700 (PDT)
>>
>>>I suggest using information dispersal to spread risk amongst
>>>remailer operators.  Use Rabin's information dispersal technique
>>>to divide up a document into n shares such that k of them can
>>>reconstruct the original, and post each share via a seperate
>>>remailer.  It would be hard for the government to single out an
>>>operator to go after since an individual share by itself is
>>>useless.
>>
>>I'm a little concerned with the usefulness of this idea in a
>>legal sense.  Imagine the physical analogue:  Alice buys the
>>guns and masks, and leaves them in a pre-arranged place.  Bob
>>anonymously buys a car and leaves it, with the keys inside, in
>>another pre-arranged place.  Carol and Dave collect the guns,
>>masks, and the car, and use them to rob a bank or hijack an
>>airplane.  Do you suppose the feds will have any problem
>>prosecuting Alice and Bob for their part in the conspiracy?
>
>Yes, I think there might be problems for the feds in this case.  Your 
>analogy is not at all accurate, since the remailers have no knowledge 
>of what their individual shares contain, and didn't supply any of the 
>input data to begin with.  Here's a different analogy:
>
>Alice and Bob and Carol and Dave run mailbox outlets.  Elmer and Fred
>jointly rent several mailboxes.  Elmer mails a single piece of a gun
>to each mailbox in a sealed package -- ABCD can have no way of
>knowing what is in each package.  Fred goes to each mailbox and gets
>the package inside, takes them all home, and assemble a weapon used 
>to commit a crime.  It is hard to see how ABCD could be included in 
>any conspiracy, because they were providing a general, legal service, 
>and they had absolutely no knowledge of the conspiracy.
>
>-- 
>Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
>kent@songbird.com			the thief he kindly spoke...
>PGP fingerprint:   B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44  61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
>http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

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E-Mail: David D. W. Downey <admin@cyberspacetechnologies.com>
Date: 08/13/97
Time: 04:45:33

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