---Some stuff deleted, basically my concern that through traffic analysis of backbone internet traffic, at least the NSA can penetrate the security of anonymous remailers----
probably only the NSA and some defense agency we haven't yet heard of are actually performing this analysis right now. But given the declining price of storage media, even saving everything on magnetic media and paying $1000/gig, it only costs about US$8.7 million to keep a year's worth of traffic headers around (media cost).
So what?
#So what indeed. # #Why oh why do we waste so much time seeking systems that are #mathematically unbreakable. You don't need mathematically unbreakable #systems to have a free market on the nets. # #It costs a minimum of $50K to start a federal criminal prosecution (that #is if the perp is inside the US). This means that the feds can only #afford a few tens of thousands a year. When you add incarceration costs #it quickly becomes very difficult. This being the case, they are #dependent on your obedience for law enforcement success. Like any #predator, the government must gain more energy from the kill than it #expends on the hunt. Otherwise it weakens and dies. All I was trying to point out with my post is what I saw as a flaw in my previous understanding of the depth of the security provided by anonymous remailers. There is a difference between relying on the mathematics of strong crypto to protect you from government spooks and prying bureacrats-- and relying on one's belief that- although one's security has been compromised, it will be too expensive or otherwise difficult for the government to use this information against you. It seems to me that anonymous remailers, despite my initial assumptions that they were cryptographically strong, are probably compromised by the ability of the NSA to monitor Internet backbone traffic, a hypothesis I would love to see disproved. Additionally, my understanding of the nature of the packet data that passes over the Internet backbones is weak; someone posted the other day that they felt the government would soon require that all data passing over the nets be addressed and labeled, enabling the Feds to monitor it--it is my understanding of networking that that day is here *now*. I want unbreakable security, untraceable communication and unforgeable digital cash--ALL of it mathematically guaranteed and none of it compromisable by some underpaid bureacrat who might decide to make a little money off of ME in his spare time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Benjamin McLemore analyst@netcom.com --