Tim May writes:
I have to speak up here and say that there is an actual working exemplar of a distributed, untraceable data haven. While it lacks a robust _payment_ mechanism, that is also untraceable, so does the "Visit Port Watson" example (which has never actually existed)
BlackNet also lacks any sense of persistence. A message posted lives at the whim of newsgroup expiration policies and getting a copy of an expired message is a non-trivial task. It is also not an overt data haven, there is really no address or pointer you can direct someone to and say "look here." Usenet as a data haven is like dropping messages in to bottles and casting them in to the sea; getting it where you want and having the intended recipient be able to find the data easily is still an unsolved problem. It is a bulletin board for establishing private two-party communications on any topic, but it is not even close to being a mechanism for "publishing" in the manner to which people have becomed accostomed to on the net. jim