Forwarded message:

From: Syniker@aol.com Date: Sat, 27 Sep 1997 20:21:11 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Digital Postage (fwd)

I'm probably not thinking right Jim -- but what if I bought a postal money order, or such, with cash... sent it too you... along with an encyrpted email that referred to the serial number of the money order... then, you uncyphered my email... to verify payment, and recyphered my account info to me... Would something like that work to establish a paid-up account?

It would provided nobody was really concerned about tracking you. Let's consider your scenario for a moment <any mistakes in comprehension or description or my own>... Process: 1. purchase M.O. with cash, presumably in person 2. use ground mail to get the M.O. to the remailer 3. send encrypted email from your nym to me identifying which account it applies to. 4. remailer receives the email and the M.O. 5. apply funds to account. I see a couple of ways a determined mallet could over time figure out who was doing what with whom. My primary assumption is that mallet has some reason to suspect a specific party and their use of anon remailers. When the M.O. is purchased, even by cash, the chances of getting put on tape is pretty high. This places a clear link between at least one party and the purchase of the M.O. (it has a serial #) and the time it was purchased (M.O.'s have time stamps). Making it trivial to figure out which security tape(s) to review. The ground mail places at least a rough geographic area as to its source unless you plan on travelling all over the states sending your M.O.'s. This is too much trouble for a user except in very unique circumstances. My grandmother for example probably won't travel across town let alone across the state on each use. By monitoring the physical mail at the remailer we can clearly link the mail to the recipient. When the remailer deposits the M.O. a record is going to be made about who received it and how much. My guess is that it would take about 3-4 cycles of this before mallet can start putting a clear picture together of what and who is involved. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage@ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|