Hello, At 25/10/05 07:18, cyphrpunk wrote:

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http://www.hbarel.com/Blog/entry0006.html

I believe that for anonymity and pseudonymity technologies to survive they have to be applied to applications that require them by design, rather than to mass-market applications that can also do (cheaper) without. If anonymity mechanisms are deployed just to fulfill the wish of particular users then it may fail, because most users don't have that wish strong enough to pay for fulfilling it. An example for such an application (that requires anonymity by design) could be E-Voting, which, unfortunately, suffers from other difficulties. I am sure there are others, though.

The truth is exactly the opposite of what is suggested in this article. The desire for anonymous communication is greater today than ever, but the necessary technology does not exist. ...snip... For the first time there are tens or hundreds of millions of users who have a strong need and desire for high volume anonymous communications. These are file traders, exchanging images, music, movies, TV shows and other forms of communication. The main threat to this illegal but widely practiced activity is legal action by copyright holders against individual traders. The only effective protection against these threats is the barrier that could be provided by anonymity. An effective, anonymous file sharing network would see rapid adoption and would be the number one driver for widespread use of anonymity. But the technology isn't there. Providing real-time, high-volume, anonymous communications is not possible at the present time. Anyone who has experienced the pitiful performance of a Tor web browsing session will be familiar with the iron self-control and patience necessary to keep from throwing the computer out the window in frustration. Yes, you can share files via Tor, at the expense of reducing transfer rates by multiple orders of magnitude. ...snip...

I agree with what you say, especially regarding the frustration with TOR, but I am not sure it contradicts the message I tried to lay out in my post. Secure browsing is one instance of anonymity applications, which, as I mentioned, is used. I completely agree that technology may not be mature enough for this other instance of anonymity applications, which is anonymous file sharing. My point was that there is a lot of anonymity-related technology that is not used, especially in the field of finance; I did not claim that there are technological solutions available for each and every anonymity problem out there. I apologize if this spirit was not communicated well. It's not that we have everything - it's that we don't use most of what we do have, although we once spent a lot of efforts designing it. Regards, Hagai.