reasons for local eternity proxies (Re: remailer resistancs to attack) (fwd)

[Jim Choate]

Forwarded message:

> Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 21:42:52 GMT
> From: Adam Back <aba at dcs.ex.ac.uk>
> Subject: reasons for local eternity proxies (Re: remailer resistancs to attack)
> 
> (Reason for local news feed being preferabl is that it protects the
> NNTP traffic which would otherwise allow eavesdroppers to observer
> which articles you were reading.  SSL is only a partial solution
> because you are then trusting the SSL NNTP server operator.) 

>From a criminal perspective is it really important to know what you were
reading but rather what you were generating? Using Van Eck it would be much
easier and cheaper to determine what you were reading than spend the money,
physical resources, and people time to figure it using traffic analysis.

It's more incriminating to prove you sent a request for illicit data than
you downloaded it. Sending it out shows premeditated intent. Simply
downloading it shows only curiosity with no other evidence. Simple traffic
analysis will determine your sourcing data even if it is fully encrypted.

> Local servers don't generate any traffic, "local server" is really a
> misnomer, it is a local proxy for reading news... it presents a view
> of USENET articles which makes them appear as web pages.  It keeps
> copies of those web pages more up to date versions are read in news,
> this allows fast access to the web space.

I point my local news readers at my ISP's news server so I don't flood my
link with several gig's of traffic a day. This is the primary objection to
hosting a 'real' local news server - the bandwidth and hardware resource
issues place it outside of most peoples financial ability.


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