[thread name changed to reflect actual topic] Wei Dai wrote:
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.
The good news is that many of the messages that people want anonymity for are *text* files, e.g., offers of services, controversial data or opinions, etc. There's a kind of tradeoff in size and urgency. To wit, it is seldom "urgent" that a 1 MB or 100 MB or whatever file get through. (Sorry I can't draw my favorite little diagram here showing the space of messages, with "urgency" and "size" as the axes.) However, I will try such a diagram here: ^ ^ | |short <---there are very few large files URGENCY |messages that must be urgently transmitted | | | | non-urgent | huge files ----------------------> text books videos 10K 1 MB 1GB S I Z E ---> (The tradeoffs are of viewing time, caching, information, etc. A short message can be _read_ quickly, and hence may need to be transmitted quickly. The canonical "Attack at dawn" message, for example. A long message, such as my 1.3 MB FAQ, clearly can be delayed for hours or days with no real loss, save impatience. My contention is that network speeds--ISDN, Mosaic usage, faster modems, direct connections--are being set up and that "urgent-but-small" messages will fit in nicely, and with low latency through remailers. In the next several years, that is.) What this means is that networks of the future, set up to handle huge files, video-on-demand, etc., will allow text messages to be carried almost unnoticeably. Interstitially, if you will. Reordering still requires N messages (whatever N may be), so it is true that remailer sites must still have some traffic. But this doesn't have to introduce latencies that are unacceptable. (If this isn't clear, what I mean by the situation about large files being shipped is that there should be little cost for users circulating their own dummy messages through remailer chains. Digital postage will cost, but costs will drop. Lots of tradeoffs here. No point in me or any of us trying to anticipate costs, volumes, etc., as these will evolve and the market will decide.) --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay