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Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 21:42:52 GMT From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> Subject: reasons for local eternity proxies (Re: remailer resistancs to attack)

(Reason for local news feed being preferabl is that it protects the NNTP traffic which would otherwise allow eavesdroppers to observer which articles you were reading. SSL is only a partial solution because you are then trusting the SSL NNTP server operator.)

From a criminal perspective is it really important to know what you were reading but rather what you were generating? Using Van Eck it would be much easier and cheaper to determine what you were reading than spend the money, physical resources, and people time to figure it using traffic analysis.

It's more incriminating to prove you sent a request for illicit data than you downloaded it. Sending it out shows premeditated intent. Simply downloading it shows only curiosity with no other evidence. Simple traffic analysis will determine your sourcing data even if it is fully encrypted.

Local servers don't generate any traffic, "local server" is really a misnomer, it is a local proxy for reading news... it presents a view of USENET articles which makes them appear as web pages. It keeps copies of those web pages more up to date versions are read in news, this allows fast access to the web space.

I point my local news readers at my ISP's news server so I don't flood my link with several gig's of traffic a day. This is the primary objection to hosting a 'real' local news server - the bandwidth and hardware resource issues place it outside of most peoples financial ability. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage@ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|