Tim May wrote:
At 12:27 PM -0800 4/23/98, Anonymous wrote:
Keep in mind that Timothy McVeigh thought he had anonymity with his use of a prepaid 'anonymous' phone card over public payphones. He was wrong.
If I recall correctly, they determined that the same calling card was used to call various places. Once they had identified the card, correlation was easy.
It is even easier to track in real-time if one has prior information in regard to the possessession of such 'anonymous' instruments, either through in-place informants on either end (or both ends) of the transaction.
What I took from this was the advisability of buying a dozen or so cheap prepaid cards, from a machine dispenser or shrinkwrap/cardpack untraceable sale, and then not use any single card over and over again.
Mr. May is astute enough to recognize that law enforcement agencies are fully capable of reading (or writing) the same guerrila-outlaw how-to books and manuals available to would-be anonymous activists, and that it is dangerous for an individual to fail to use their own wit and wisdom to add additional layers of protection and deception to guerilla methods commonly championed. e.g. - a 'known plaintext' becomes one-step deeper when translated into an unfamiliar language.
It is highly unlikely that electronically-based 'anonymous' technology is going to be any more untracable than meatspace-disseminated tools of anonymity.
With all due respect, I think you're talking out of your ass on this one.
One should be careful about insulting people named 'Anonymous', since we come from such a large family...
The math of tracing messages routed through a network of N selected remailers each properly executing a remailer protocol (e.g., accumulating M messages, encryption at each stage, etc.) is far, far stronger than anything McVeigh was using.
Very true, but I was thinking more in terms of the pre-existing compromise of the tools of anonymity which will be offered/marketed to the masses. e.g. - Decades ago, after picking up a book order from Loompmatics which I had sent to a cold-address (USPS), I shortly thereafter watched in amusement as border-guards tore my vehicle apart looking for material that they theoretically were not supposed to know I had taken possession of, not knowing that my 'unreasonable' paranoia had resulted in my making a 'test run' before crossing the border with them.
I had hoped there would be many more remailers in use by the time the next Big Event happened and involved remailers, but it appears remailers are spreading slowly and the pressure cooker is reaching the bursting point for more patriot or militia or terrorist actions.
There are many more remailers in existence than is readily apparent. The Winsock remailer software, for instance, has been modified to allow 'clustered' remailers to exist on a single server, wherein a number of individuals can channel their email to a separate in-house remailer designed to give them an outgoing consistent persona that is not traceable to their incoming message through ordinary man-in- the-middle tracking. Totoally Anonymous