A >probably only the NSA and some defense agency we haven't A >yet heard of are actually performing this analysis right now. But A >given the declining price of storage media, even saving everything on A >magnetic media and paying $1000/gig, it only costs about US$8.7 million A >to keep a year's worth of traffic headers around (media cost). A > A >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. Did you know that fewer than 1000 people are convicted of federal tax evasion every year. Your obedience is in turn dependent on your view of whether or not obedience is right and on your fear of punishment. Quite apart from computer networks both the ideology of obedience and the fear of punishment have been declining. Net society further weakens both of these factors. The consensual hallucination that is rule by others seems more threadbare every year. The DDR border guards had the machine guns to fire on the crowds at the Berlin Wall on 10 Nov 1989. It was not mechanical failure or a magic shield that prevented them from firing. It was simply because a change had occurred in the minds of the citizenry (and in their own minds). Sure the feds can nuke your house. Would that gain them anything? It would cost more than it was worth. What they can't do is sit down next to every person on earth (or on the nets) and intimidate them. In the past it didn't matter because almost everyone was a peasant bound to the soil. As you keep piling technology and market opportunities (choices) on individuals, their power increases. Governance of others is hard enough when those governed are weak. It rapidly becomes impossible as they gain strength. Today and in the future, those who "move like Gods through cyberspace" will be much harder to control particularly since such controls will depend not on guns but on them convincing us that we are not free. DCF "They would not leave him alone." -- The first line of what relevant work of fiction? --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165