[Cryptography] Is Traffic Analysis the problem (was Re: Good private email)
----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger"
Traffic analysis is the problem
Do you really think that for most people on the planet, that it is?
Probably. If one's threat model is mass dragnet surveillance, traffic analysis is far too useful a way for the enemy to figure out who to subject to detailed analysis. The fact that quite so much traffic analysis data is being collected and saved right now should be a warning -- people who have huge budgets seem to think that it is an interesting way to snoop. Imagine you're the dictator of a country, and you want to figure out who all your political enemies are so you can throw them in camps. Simply producing the social network graph connecting up a few known activists to their tightest cluster of common contacts is going to give you loads of juicy information on who to spy on in detail and likely who to detain. Indeed, the traffic analysis information is probably the best way to figure out where to look for the needles in the haystack.
Hey folks, go off and design your perfect secure system. Build a prototype or alpha-test even. And then watch while the millions of people who could benefit from private email, and the few who could use it as an infrastructure to build more services, ignore you.
It doesn't have to be either-or. :) There are a lot of people in the community. Working on many different approaches is probably for the best. It is hard to tell, a priori, what will happen to take off. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5
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Eugen Leitl