December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 02:29:28 -0400 > From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh(a)efga.org> > Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd) > At 12:25 AM 9/29/97 -0500, Jim Choate wrote: > >> From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh(a)efga.org> > >> So I proposed, and documented, that the minimum level to achieve this > >> would be a $50K investment over a year's time. This is in fact, more or > >> less what the Cracker remailer takes to run. > > > >I have to disagree on the annual cost to run. Considering the load of > >remailers a simple ISDN would be sufficient. > > Sure. You can run a remailer on whatever bandwidth, and under whatever > conditions you choose. Duh. > When I did a breakdown of the pricing, I simply put > forth what Cracker has behind it, not the minimum required. But with an > ISDN line, you then have to have a location to house it, so you in theory > require rent. You also add one more thing in the loop that is subject to > failure. Like a T1 doesn't require a POP. Like T1's and their associated CSU/DSU's and such don't break (tell that to several of my customers who will get a hearty chuckle out of that one). Like they don't need air-conditioning and other support services. > The winsock remailer demonstrates that a remailer can run on a 28.8K PPP > connection, part time. Remailers never have been bandwidth intensive. True, but to be effective they must be available on demand and the user shouldn't have to wait until your auto-dialer feels this is a good time to deliver the service. > An advantage of the 10MB connection for Cracker is that when those several > hundred megabyte mailbombs, and thousands of addresses to the same location > come in, they can be discarded faster than with a 64K ISDN connection. I have found that my 128k connection very seldom gets congested even with high traffic. Other traffic choke points usualy limit the amount of traffic that I see. Even when one of my customers runs their resume tracking program (which will saturate a ethernet easily in testing) can seldom saturate the line for more than a few seconds. > In reality, Cracker runs with whatever resources have been made available > to us. It turns out we were offered a spare 10MB connection before we > offered a spare 64K connection. And interestingly enough, the true cost of > the 10MB connection is less than the 64K ISDN connection would be. There > are definite advantages to a colocated machine even if it is what we are > "stuck with". Ah, so cracker is not a true commercial model but rather a hybrid then? You pay for some services and a 3rd party donates the rest? I'm wondering about your co-location machine, from your comments above it must be sitting in a field since you don't pay rent (or was that your way of saying somebody else pays the rent for you?). Is this so? Since so many of your utilities and physical plant are donated I have to question the accuracy and utility of your figures as well as the applicability of those figures to a true commercial enterprise. Whether you have realized it or not, all those seemingly great freebies and perks for nothing actualy make the remailer less stable because your operation relies on the good feelings of a 3rd party which can be used to Mallet's advantage. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

3 2

colocation costs: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 16:03:22 -0700 > From: Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> > Subject: colocation costs: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd) > >>I'm wondering about your co-location machine, from your comments above it > >>must be sitting in a field since you don't pay rent (or was that your way of > >>saying somebody else pays the rent for you?). Is this so? Since so many of > >>your utilities and physical plant are donated I have to question the > >>accuracy and utility of your figures as well as the applicability of those > >>figures to a true commercial enterprise. > > Depending on the security, performance, and price you're looking for, > you can run your own machine on your own premises, > run your own machine in somebody else's colocation facility (either > as a favor, like anon.efga.org may be, or using a commercial ISP), > have somebody else run a dedicated machine for you (mostly ISPs), > buy a shell account on an ISP or other service provider's machine, > use a free shell account from somewhere, or use an IP-only connection. I am quite aware of what it takes, it's what I have done using SSZ since going online to the Internet full time in '92 via modem. > Sure, free colocation space is nice, It isn't nice, it's a threat to the utility and security of the remailer. > for far less than the rent you'd pay for doing the whole job yourself, > since they have economies of scale by handling multiple colocation > customers and > also handling their own servers. True, but you take a hit on security if you don't have a personal arrangement with the provider. It also means you won't be on hand when the cops come a knocking...better use CFS or something similar. This will require having some sort of contact point for times when the system gets rebooted, it's obvious you won't give the pass phrase to the operator. There are other issues involved like the utility of having a business at home and the number of legitimate deductions that can be taken. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

Re: Digital Postage (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 15:52:22 -0400 > From: Anonymous <anon(a)anon.efga.org> > Subject: Re: Digital Postage (fwd) > Jim Choate wrote: > >> Ecash is in place right now. > > > >True, but there are only 3 systems and it is not clear at all which > >will dominate and be used by all parties. > > No, there is only one system which provides anonymity. It's called ecash. > The other systems do not have the features we want. Yes, but it does not have a clear market advantage. In fact the anonymity issue may actualy work against it. > There is a commonly held belief that one form of payment or another > must dominate. I can assure you that any business will not use multiple protocols unless their interface is the same for all of them. There simply isn't enough business to have very many systems. Ask yourself this, how attractive would the Internet have been if it had required users to install and manage multiple communications protocols for every connection? > This is an artifact of laws which require a society to > use one type of payment. Historically there have been a wide variety > of different currencies, just as there has been a wide variety of any > "commodity." Different currenciens don't mean different payment systems. Even though we have dollars, yen, rubels, etc. the things people do with them and the way the systems are built are pretty much the same. This is why international business works in the first place; they got banks, we got banks. If I can buy a Quarter Pounder (Le Royale) in the US I figure I can work it out in Russia. > >Also there is the issue of security in regards to maintaning > >anonymity when there is such a small pool of parties to use. Doesn't > >take a genius to figure out where to hang out and watch the action. > > Do you mean watch the bank and see who is using e-cash? That might > tell you who is using remailers, but not much else. But who is using the remailers is the point in traffic analysis if I'm not mistaken. Not very anonymous if they know who you are. > >> This is easily worked out between the remailer operator and the > >> customer. > > > >How? There is certainly no clear mechanism in place. Does the > >customer contact each remailer operator prior to sending the traffic, > >thus opening up N opportunities for anonymity cracking. > > Can do! Remailer operators can easily advertise what they sell and > how much it costs without compromising the customer the same way they > advertise their remailer and its features now. Can do what? Anonymity cracking or create a payment system that allows for the intermediate parties to be paid but doesn't over-burden the user? The point is not to have the poor end user have to create a half- dozen payment arrangements to get chaining. It becomes a real hassle to do at that point. We're talking about the people that drive the one block to the store to get more beer... > I recommend that people start pricing at a quarter per message per hop > because it is easier to move prices down than to move them up. This is the silliest thing I think I have heard so far in this discussion. A quarter a message per hop is about 2,000+ times too expensive to make anonymous remailers work. The key to anonyous remailers is not the cost per message but rather the amount of traffic to be carried. Anonymous remailers are beasts of mass markets measured in millions of recipients. And my experience is that prices move up and people expect them to. > >If the operators agree to a system how do we get there? Is it time to have a > >anon-remailer conference to settle on distributed payment schemes? > > Absolutely not. The remailers certainly don't have to charge the same > rates. Each remailer operator should use a pricing scheme that works > for them. But the system to post charges BETWEEN remailers must be pretty consistent to be acceptable. That is the key and it has NOT been discussed too any great degree. That inter-remailer traffic must be anonymous also or else traffic analysis can back-track. It seems to me that the remailers need some sort of anonymous payment server that is put in place for some other reason, that way they don't have to deal with the justification issue. The most obvious issue where anonymous purchasing would be of interest to the regular consumer is to prevent the collection of information about them through their purchases. Perhaps what we need is a business which purchases things as an agent of its members and then distributes them through some anonymous tracking system. That way the only stats collected by retailers are those of the aggregate purchasing requests. Then a member could request the purchase of some credit line on a remailer. The remailers could become members of such a system and purchase credit lines on each other to deal with chaining payment issues. > >Unless it is pertty serious nobody is going to pay such a fee just to > >send an email around. > > What is being sold is privacy and security, not e-mail transport. It > has great value to me and many cypherpunks. If you don't value it, > that's your business. What is being sold is anonymity. It does not necessarily provide privacy and may in fact decrease your security. > >The problem I see is one of scale. The infrastructure for handling > >physical mail is very 'bulky' and requires a lot infrastructure. > > >Email on the other hands effectively rides on the back of an existing > >Internet infrastructure for nearly free. > > You are confusing one cost of doing business with the price the market > will bear. How? What I am saying is that physical mail and the system developed for dealing with it went hand-in-hand. The design and advancement of the Internet technology is not driven by email or it's technology. That perhaps because of this difference perhaps we need to look at models other than the postage one. It in fact may be coloring our perception and a look at alternative models might help. > >Because of the historicaly low cost for email this would tend to in > >general indicate a low market value on anon remailers. > > Not to people who care about their privacy. But, I agree that the > price per hop will likely drop far below a quarter, not because people > won't pay more, but because they won't have to. If it's basically > inexpensive to provide remailer services (and it is), price > competition should reduce the costs. The remailer itself is cheap, it's the rest of the system that needs working on. Furthermore, most people who want privacy aren't going to be saying anything anyway, anonymous or otherwise. The people who will use anonymous remailers are people who have something to say but for one reason or another don't wan't it tied to them personaly. It's not privacy but 'plausible deniability' they are looking for. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

3 2

Re: Stronghold
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lucky Green <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> writes: > On Thu, 2 Oct 1997, Anonymous wrote: > > > > > C2Net was wrong to censor the cypherpunks list in the guise of moderation. > > It was wrong to send threatening letters to people who claimed its > > products were weak. The whole moderation/censorship experiment was a > > terrible mistake. The actions taken by C2Net were completely unjustified. > > Where do people get these bizarre ideas? C2 didn't censor the list. A guy > who happened to work for C2 dropped some messages from one list. The > messages still went out on the unfiltered list. Had he worked for Mc > Donald's or the the NYC Sanitiation Department, would you blame them for > this as well? Are you serious? The messages dropped were those which made (spurious) claims of weaknesses in C2 products. And later messages were dropped which attempted to discuss the dropping of earlier messages. The effect was that subscribers to the filtered list not only were not exposed to the messages critical of C2, they were prevented from knowing that a controversy existed about the filtering policies. There can be little doubt of the truth of these facts. One of us is remembering things wrongly. And yes, if the moderator were a McDonalds employee and he not only dropped messages which criticized McDonalds, but also filtered out later messages complaining about his actions, then I'd jolly well blame him.

1 0

Re: "Show me an example of terrorists using the Internet or crypto"
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Individuals need ways to defend themselves from the physical aggression of others. One of the reasons why people associate into societies, cities, and governments, is for the advantages of protection which can be achieved by large numbers of people acting in concert against their common enemy. They also insitute police forces and national defense agencies for the same reason: defense against physical aggression. Everyone on the planet has enemies, and anyone can become, or behave essentially as, an enemy - even someone's physically stronger kid brother who decides to hit them with a stone because of talking on the phone too long, even a former lover/husband who decides to kill their girlfriend/wife out of jealousy. Stalkers, thieves, rapists, drug addicts, perverts, etc., or just real animals from the animal kingdom, strike at the most inopportune times, when there are no officially sanctioned police forces around to be of help. But even if there were security guards constantly available at every street corner or planted inside one's house, the principle is the same: people are physially vulnerable and need defense from those who would take advantage of them, who would by weaken them and do physical harm. Guns are imperfect tools and humans are often imperfect fools in the use of them. Se la vie. Nevertheless, until the design of guns is improved, or until there is a better weapon, a better tool invented which can be used by individuals - independently of organized defense agencies - for their own use in regard of their own safety, guns will be manufactured, sold, and bought. And used. Killing people is a Bad Thing, but there exist people who don't prevent themselves from doing harmful, destructive things to others. At that particular point in time, when they are about to commit their crime against another, their potential victims are in the position of having to do something of practical use, and quickly. They could use karate, or ju-jitsu, or ninja stars, or call their dog to attack, or yell for help, or use their special pocket knife, or run, or use a gun. But they must do *something*, they must employ some means to prevent from being harmed, or from having their valuables taken, or else suffer the consequences of debility or death. Such is the position which an "out-of-control" person can put one in. It is possible to reason that such uncontrolled people need to have been raised better, could have received psychological assistance, should have been given an alternative view of life, might have been presented with better values and philosophies, etc. But you have to also consider how much intellectual support any individual must be provided - must they be programmed from birth with the proper structure of behavior, in order to have around oneself the convenience of living with "good people" who are not inimical to the society? (and would that be a society of real humans, of interest to other real humans) Is what a person makes of themselves ultimately a personal project, or is it to be pre-determined and continuously managed by others (parents, teachers, guidance counselors, psychologists, government clerks, policing agencies, government agencies, government leaders). When you relate to a person, will you be relating to someone with their own identity and personal ambitions, who make independent decisions about the actions they take, or only to a product of other people's influence? In any case, when someone behaves counter to your own wishes and seeks do with you what they will, or to take from you what they will, including your life, you must determine whether to allow it or how to prevent it - and if moved to prevent it, what will work to accomplish that. It might be necessary to kill that Bad Person (though not their whole family or relatives or neighborhood or race or country). .. Blanc

1 0

Re: Forwarded mail... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Subject: Re: Forwarded mail... (fwd) > Date: Thu, 2 Oct 97 18:52:18 -0400 > From: "Brian B. Riley" <brianbr(a)together.net> > None of these targets shoots back ... none of these targets pump up > much adrenaline. I have been shot at several times, some were hunting accidents and some were intentional. I did not freek out nor did my adrenalin rush impede my ability to think or to react. I did shoot back in each case. I am still alive and don't have a single bullet hole in my body so I must be doing something right. Don't know about them, I left the area in every case ASAP. > can tell you of making several 25-35 yard snap shots in the jungle at > moving shooting targets with the adrenaline driving my eyeballs > through the roof My house at 1am is not comparable to the jungle nor is the psychological situation comparable either. I am not confused about where or what is going on nor am I worried about making my tour. I am faced with the clear situation of somebody who wants to do me bodily harm. That doesn't scare me, it pisses me off to no end. When I get a rush I don't shake and such, I get very calm and methodical. It's only after the crisis has passed that I tend to sit down and shake like hell. > The point is, "shooting to wound" is a dangerous delusion! No shit. Let me make this clear. The ONLY way I would even consider shooting to wound was if the burglar was CLEARLY UNARMED, and the only reason that would happen was because in Texas shooting unarmed persons, even burglars, is illegal other than that you'd be dead. In any other situation my intent is to kill, kill, kill. As I said before, I would start with a center chest body shot and work up (which is natural since the aim point for successive shots will rise). > have always followed is don't take out your gun unless you are going > to use it; don't use it unless you intend to kill. Makes decisions > much easier on that basis. We agree on this point. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

Re: "Show me an example of terrorists using the Internet or (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 18:22:26 -0700 > From: Blanc <blancw(a)cnw.com> > Subject: Re: "Show me an example of terrorists using the Internet or > crypto" > Stalkers, thieves, rapists, drug addicts, perverts, etc., or just real > animals from the animal kingdom, strike at the most inopportune times, when > there are no officially sanctioned police forces around to be of help. I have to object to the inclusion of drug addicts, they do what they do because the legislators and police want to stick their noses in other peoples business. If drug addicts resort to crime then society as a whole must garner some of the responsibility of putting them in that situation. In short the methods we use to control drug use in this country promote crime. This does not apply to others who would do this anyway and happen to take drugs, which means the drug laws are clearly unreasonable. > something of practical use, and quickly. They could use karate, or > ju-jitsu, or ninja stars, or call their dog to attack, or yell for help, or Isn't killing dogs a bad thing? I am shure my dog thinks so. Perhaps their is a lesson to be had in comparative psychology here. It's much easier to ask another entity to die for you because you consider them different and therefore of less value in the grand scheme of things. Human history is full of such instances. This also happens to be the rationale a lot if not all burglars use to justify their actions as well. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

Re: "Show me an example of terrorists using the Internet or crypto" (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 16:47:32 -0400 > From: Anonymous <anon(a)anon.efga.org> > Subject: Re: "Show me an example of terrorists using the Internet or crypto" > The only conclusion that can be drawn is that civilians, even armed > civilians with combat experience, are so overwhelmingly peace loving > that they will bend very far backwards to avoid trouble, even if it > means thousands of hours of work. Can the same be said of career > military or government people? A D E C L A R A T I O N By the REPRESENTATIVES of the U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A, In GENERAL CONGRESS assembled. [deleted material] Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. [deleted material] ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 11:33:00 -0400 > From: Anonymous <anon(a)anon.efga.org> > Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd) > Jim Choate: > > >For the sender to chain from remailer to remailer to destination the > >destination has to be in the header info somewhere. Now in the most secure > >system each packet header will only contain the address of the next hop. When > >the next site gets it the packet contents are de-crypted (otherwise reading > >the chaining info is trivial) and the contents are uncovered to reveal another > >packet with the next hop header and another encrypted block. And on and on > >we go. > > > ><Question: Are there any remailer sets that impliment the encrypted nested > > packet system?> > > Jim Choate has been amazingly clueless throughout this discussion, but > this takes the cake. Does he really not know about encrypted nested > chaining? My God! Of course remailers work this way, Jim. They've > worked this way practically from the beginning. All remailers work this > way. No they don't, all remailers do not encrypt their outgoing as a matter of course (do any currently do it as a matter of course? I would bet not if I were a gambler). The remailer you used to send this didn't use encryption on its outgoing or else I wouldn't be able to read it. The last time I looked about a year ago the vast majority of remailers didn't encrypt their outgoing traffic as a matter of course, it required the user to do it (I suspect this is still true). Furthermore I specificaly used the word 'set' to mean a group of remailers acting in concert such that this encryption happened automaticaly - I know the answer already - No, there are no sets (ie a cooperative network) of remailers (Mixmaster operaters included) implimenting this unless the user goes to extreme and does it all themselves. As a matter of fact there appears to be little to no cooperation between remailer operators. There are no remailer key servers to manage the server and user keys so the user must contact each remailer and obtain the key which is itself open to traffic analysis, note that such first contacts by definition have to be in the clear. Hope that Mallet starts their analysis AFTER you get your keys or else. If this process can't occur automagicaly there is little commercial utility for the system - it's too cumbersome. > The mixmaster remailers are built around this idea, making each > packet a constant size and adding dummy packets as new ones are stripped > off, so outgoing messages look just like incoming ones. First off, the size of the packets in no way effects the succes of a traffic analysis, only a cryptanalysis of their contents. Traffic analysis looks at four things: the incoming packet header, the outgoing packet header, and the times of receipt and transmission. The idea behind latency is that if it is chosen correctly and the packet re-transmission falls outside the analysis window there is no way to correlate the incoming and outgoing traffic. From the analysis engines perspective the events are distinct and non-related. Simply re-ordering the packets at re-transmission time does nothing if I set the window larger than the time it takes to resend the original traffic and the cover traffic. Setting the analysis window to infinity also causes the analysis overhead to grow quickly though this means that re-ordering and latency are irrelevant. A party implimenting traffic analysis is probably not going to look at the contents until they have a clear understanding of the traffic flow between the surveiled parties. At that point it is cheaper to look at the involved parties and see if one of them has a weakness that can be exploited (ie offer immunity to a herion addict) over doing actual expensive cryptanalysis. If you can subvert a member you are in the classic man-in-the-middle position. When the Austin Cpunks looked at Mixmaster about 1.5 years ago for several months it became clear that as implimented currently Mixmaster can't easily support public remailer key servers or automated non-user-involved chaining and processing (encryption & decryption). Shure the packets look the same, but unless you as the sender go in and manage that material you are shit out of luck. The remailers can't do it themselves without user intervention, that's economicly not viable. > ><speculation: an encrypted chain could be made stronger if the next > > hop header depended on which key was used to decode it. > > In other words, remailer A's key will produce one next hop > > address while remailer B's key will send it elsewhere. This > > is a subset of the different plaintext - same cyphertext > > problem - a hard problem as I understand it. Find two > > distinct texts that encrypt with different keys to the > > same cyphertext> > > That won't help. There would be no point in doing this. I'd ask you > to explain, but that would just prolong the agony. It is actualy quite simple why you would want to do this. You could then in effect send the same packet (identical in every bit) to a set of remailers. Each remailer would then decode the packet and send it on. All but one would go to bogus addresses and the one remailer with the right key would get to resend to the next remailer(s). Plus none of the outgoing traffic would be to the same server, further complicating analysis. This also gives the user some control over how much cover traffic gets generated. However Mallet doesn't know which packets are which and therefore must follow every packet. This multiplies the number of hops in the traffic analysis that need to be analyzed. As mentioned in one of my previous posts, in this situation the complexity goes up by a power causing the required computing resources to trace the traffic to quickly become excessive. Sine this is so painful for you, I assume this is the end of this discussion. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

None (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Fri, 3 Oct 1997 04:05:48 +0200 (MET DST) > Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash > From: nobody(a)REPLAY.COM (Anonymous) > A pinging system can be set up to verify that all the remailers are > operating correctly. It will certaily tell you if the system is network aware, as to internal operation and its validity it says nothing. If you want to test it you must send each remailer in the network a message with a final destination of the source. If you don't get it back you know the remailer is not online. This is called a 'loopback'. > Thus forwarding within the remailer network is free, So as long as I only send traffic to other remailers the electricity and such are not charged? How does my local electric company measure this? If the remailer is turned on there is a cost. Unless you are getting charged by the packet the cost of operating is indipenant of the traffic until you have to increase your clogged pipe. Commercialy irrelevant approach. > insert new messages. This scheme is a little more flexible than attaching > ecash to each message because you can arrange any type of fee schedule you > like, such as a flat rate per month. But it doesn't pay for the cover traffic. It also short changes the man-in-the-middle remailers since they have to spend resources without getting recompensed. This would indicate that there is little financial motive to operate a remailer that deals only with other remailers. > There's also the reverse of this, where remailers accept from anyone, but > only send to other remailers. Thus you have to pay to get your messages > out of the remailer network. This is more restrictive because the payment > must be anonymous. So what keeps me from submitting message after message and never pulling them out? I guess you just keep paying the bills to pay for the increasing traffic and the need to increase your pipe to carry it. Commercialy irrelevant. Also, consider the exponential expansion from cover traffic. > Sign up with an ISP that offers alt.anonymous.messages. This one is a > no-brainer. (and profitable for the ISP) > > This results in a system where sending messages is essentially free (since > free remailers exist) but it costs money to receive them. So far it seems > to be successful, at least for those who pay a flat fee for usenet access. So what if I use a free-net or perhaps one of the free machines at the public library or at the local college? Or the system at work? ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0