On Sat, 7 Jan 1995, Adam Shostack wrote:
Anonymous mail has bandwidth costs that are only slightly higher than regular mail. You could hide quite a bit in most video packets. The latency is a reflection of the lack of volume, because volume is needed for reordering. If your favorite remailer gets more mail, the latency will drop.
Anonymous e-mail that goes through a chain of N remailers will cost at least N times as much bandwidth and have N times as much latency as normal e-mail. But e-mail is hardly the state-of-the-art of network communication, while anonymous e-mail IS the state of the art for anonymous communication. How long will it take for the technology of anonymous video conferencing to develope, for example? By then, of course, those who are not concerned with anonymity will probably have things such as full sensory virtual interaction. Note that I SUPPORT anonymous communication, but its costs of bandwidth and latency may be a real obsticle to developing Cryptoanarchy (of the kind described by Tim May) if most people are not willing to put up with those costs. Wei Dai PGP encrypted mail welcome.