From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 1998 11:37:47 +0800
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: steganography and delayed release of keys (Re: EternityServices)
In-Reply-To: <v03102801b0df03d95cd4@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <v03102803b0e08ed02241@[207.167.93.63]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 6:46 PM -0800 1/12/98, Adam Back wrote:

>One tactic which could protect a USENET newsgroup operator from child
>porn prosecutions is if he had no practical way to recognize such
>materials until after it was distributed to down stream sites.

Who are these "USENET newsgroup operators," anyway? (A few newsgroups are
moderated, by individuals or committees, but the vast majority are not.)

Newsgroups get removed from university and corporate newsfeeds, or by
nations, and Adam's ruse would not stop them from continuing to do so.


>> >The solution I am using is to keep reposting articles via remailers.
>> >Have agents which you pay to repost.  This presents the illusion of
>>
>> This of course doesn't scale at all well. It is semi-OK for a tiny, sparse
>> set of reposted items, but fails utterly for larger database sets. (If and
>> when Adam's reposted volumes begin to get significant, he will be viewed as
>> a spammer. :-) )
>
>The best criticism of my eternity design to date!  I agree.

I assume you are serious, and do agree, as it is a very solid criticism of
the "Eternity as continuous posting to Usenet" model.

I see several axes to the analysis of the various Eternity schemes.

-- retrieval time for a customer or client to obtain some set of data,
ranging from (I assume) ~minutes or less in an Eternity DDS file system to
~days or less in a Blacknet system to (I am guessing) ~weeks or months in
an Adam Back sort of system.

(Given constraints on Usenet in existence today. Technological and
political constraints in how many gigabytes will be sent. The binaries
groups are already overloading many systems, of course.)

-- bandwidth consumed in the system

-- number of nodes

-- security

(I have my own biases, and will elaborate when I get some time to put my
thoughts together.)


--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^2,976,221   | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."