First, some axioms: 1) Remailers help defeat traffic analysis. 2) The remailer network is small, because there is no commercial incentive. 3) Traffic through remailers is politically and commercially sensitive. These axioms lead me to argue that, in the current worldwide political climate, the most that can be expected is that the remailer network will expand only by commercial but underground remailers accepting anonymous digital cash on a per-message basis. Why?: 1) Commercial -- because most people don't have enough spare resources to devote them to an effort of this magnitude. 2) Underground -- because in most of the world, there will be a category of messages that the local government will find unacceptable. If the remailer is in the industrialized part of the world, these governments will have the resources to crack down on the remailer, possibly comprising the remailer system in the process. (Remailers in non-industrialized or semi-industrialized areas will not be stable enough due to infrastructure problems.) 3) Anonymous digital cash on a per-message basis -- because anything else is subject to government and/or commercial/organizational coercion. Keeping accounts at several remailers will mark you as surely as if you advertised the holding of these accounts on your Web. Per-message anonymity of payment is the only way to significantly increase the work factor of those trying to break through your veil of anonymity. ========================================================== Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics fisherm@indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN "Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is 'Don't Tread on Me'"