update on Crowds

[Mike Reiter]

Back in April we circulated an announcement for a system called
"Crowds" for browsing the web anonymously.  Here is an update on
its status.

1) There is a new, more complete version of the Crowds paper, and a
new web page from which you can retrieve it.  The page's URL is

http://www.research.att.com/projects/crowds/

Of course, comments are welcomed and appreciated.

2) AT&T has finally decided to release the code, and we are working
out a free license for noncomercial use with our lawyers right now.
Once that is done, we would like to start alpha testing.  Alpha
testing will require some commitment from the testers, and we are
looking for serious people who are interested in contributing to our
attempt at providing anonymity to the Internet community.  To be an
alpha tester, you should have access to a machine

- running SunOS, Solaris, or Irix
- with Perl 5.003 or later
- with a high-throughput connection to the Internet (no modems please!)
- that is not behind a firewall

Moreover, testers must be US citizens, due to the cryptography in the
code.  If you are interested in being an alpha tester, please send
email to either of us.  In your email, please describe the platform on
which you'll be running.

Mike Reiter <reiter at research.att.com>
Avi Rubin   <rubin at research.att.com>