On Sun, 8 Jan 1995 wcs@anchor.ho.att.com wrote:
My initial reaction to "Anonymous video conferencing" was "That's when you wear black ski masks and use voice scramblers and call from video payphones", i.e. not very useful. ("Subcomandata Marcos here...")
Video conferencing was just ONE of the applications of high-bandwidth, low-latency anonymous communication. Maybe it was a bad example. Here's a couple more: 1. anonymous distributed computing: suppose Alice wants to help Bob crack a secret key by using both of their computers, but the algorithm entails some heavy exchange of data between them 2. anonymous remote consulting: Alice is building a nuclear bomb and needs help, so she sends a live video feed of her workshop to Bob (and have the computer blot out her face in real time). Bob sends Alice an audio only commentary of what Alice is doing wrong. We tend to focus on the more exotic applications of these tools, but as mjk pointed out they will have perfectly ordinary uses by people who simply don't want everyone in the world to be able to know everything about them. Maybe Alice just wants to call AT&T to ask about their Clipper phone, and not have everybody realize that and send her a bunch of propaganda about Voice PGP. :-) Even now, this may not be as implausible as it sounds. What if Alice is using MCI as the long distance carrier, and MCI happens to be selling Voice PGP? Wei Dai