At 10:45 AM 8/13/96 -0700, shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green) wrote:
The *real* challenge: how do you support sender- and recipient- anonymous phone calls with strong security? Have fun.
Sender anonymous phone calls are easy. You route them through PipeNet, assuming every PipeNet node has a telephony gateway. Recipient anonymous phone calls a harder to implement.
Assuming PipeNet is a descendant of the Packet Laundry concept, recipient-anonymous phone calls are also easy - build a meet-me box, AKA conference bridge. Recipient John Doe #3 reserves a conference bridge, sends anon-email to John Doe #6 and John Doe #43, saying "meet me at Bridge7.conference.netphone.com at midnight Zulu time, password 'foobar'" and they all call in. Payment: If the conference bridge is run by a vanilla commercial Internet-telephony service, it may want some sort of non-private payment, but would probably accept phone cards. Otherwise you're stuck with credit cards. If it's run by an enlightened service provider or some sort of punknet, it'll take anonymous digicash. Maybe the host pays, maybe everybody. Or you could digitally record the sounds of dropping quarters in a payphone :-) # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!