On Fri, 3 Aug 2001, Ray Dillinger wrote:
Now look at the system, the infrastructure, that you need to send that message anonymously. It relies on identifiable remops existing at known addresses. Known to the people sending messages == known to the cops.
Not necessarily. Consider 'small world' networks. The only people who know (necessarily) of a given remailer are the operator and his users. They share a set of keys so traffic can be source encrypted. The remailer operator shares a seperate set of infrastructure keys with some of the remailer operators that they know (as distinct from the users of that same remailer/operator). Consider that sender/receiver know each other and can use yet a third encryption layer that is independent from the other two (ie the target address does not have to be known to the initial remailer operator though it will be in the header going to the first remailer. None of the intermediate remailers need to ever decrypt that far until the TTL reaches zero/one (depending on design taste). Now couple this with Plan 9's ability to completely distribute both process and file space and 'where' a remailer might be, or even 'who' is running it become a rather sticky point since it doesn't necessarily run on the 'operators' hardware.
If the law wants to take this thing down, they will not be attacking the strongest point -- ie, trying to trace individual messages.
But the only place they can trace messages in a 'small world' model is at source/destination link, which means they're already on top of you. If they're out fishing all they'd see is a bunch of packets sent between remailers with the body encrypted several layers deep with keys held by a variety of people. The beauty of the 'small world' model is it does away with the 'trust transivity' issue completely. All the intermediate remailers can do is drop a packet. Which will get recognized pretty quickly because of the inherent secondary (ie personal interaction) network that sits behind the remailer network itself.
Instead, they will attack the weakest point -- trying to drive remailer operators out of business and thus destroy the infrastructure you need.
With Plan 9 that would require them to outlaw using a particular OS. Maybe in a lot of places, but not in the US.
That is the threat model I'm concerned about, and given that network monitoring is now automatable and cheap, it is entirely do-able.
If you stick with current paradigms. -- ____________________________________________________________________ Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Tesla be", and all was light. B.A. Behrend The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------