"Timothy C. May" <tcmay@got.net> wrote:
At 11:01 PM -0400 10/15/96, Rabid Wombat wrote:
Also - in order to communicate back to the perpetrator, the victim needs to communicate to the first step in the chain. The operator of that chain
BlackNet-type pools eliminate the chain. There is no "first step in the chain," only a message pool or Usenet group which is propagated to tens of thousands of sites around the world (and even available via one's satellite dish and local cable, a la DirectPC, @Home, etc.).
I've been thinking about the use of Usenet as a message pool and this seems to be a good place to bring up my thoughts. As an already existing, widely disseminated and easily used message pool, Usenet is very valuable to us. I'm concerned that it may not last though. Many people now complain about how low the signal to noise ratio is (even more than they complain about this list). I've heard people say that they have given up on newsgroups in favor of mailing list, web-zines, etc. So, if it gets too bad, might it just fade away? Or, if it remains but becomes unpopular, will it be easy to restrict if we use it for anonymous messages? Not long ago on this list some people discussed possible changes to Usenet involving the elimination of newsgroups and their replacement with a searching system (ie. show me all articles with "cypherpunks" as a keyword). Has this gone anywhere? I was thinking that this could be done in a way as to be compatible with current implementations. A server could be written which would act like an nntp server if connected to on the nntp port, but which would work differently internally. When an nntp client makes a request regarding some news group, say alt.anonymous.messages, the server would search its single, unsorted pool of articles for all with "alt.anonymous.messages" in the newsgroup field of the header and respond to the request. Clients written for the new server would have access to its enhanced features (whatever they end up being). Although this does not have any direct crypto relevance, preserving Usenet as an anonymous message pool seems like a good idea to me. And to preserve it as an anonymous message pool, it needs to be kept useful for its other uses. I'm willing to work on this but I don't have the experience to lead an effort. So, is anyone interested or is anyone already working along these lines?
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--Tim May
"The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology." [NYT, 1996-10-02] We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed.
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Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."
-------------------- Scott V. McGuire <svmcguir@syr.edu> PGP key available at http://web.syr.edu/~svmcguir Key fingerprint = 86 B1 10 3F 4E 48 75 0E 96 9B 1E 52 8B B1 26 05