CDR: ZKS and Ebola

[Anonymous]

On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Anonymous Remailer wrote:

> Few points, in the wake of current ZKS-sold-out-no-we-did-not
> discussions.
>
> First, do we all agree who the adversary is when ZKSs customer encrypts
> traffic ?
>
> Is that the neighbor, the employer, the insurance company, ISP,
> Microsoft, her husband, or the government ? All entities on this list
> except one can be effectively neutralized with single-DES and free
> Anonymizer.com access. The government is the only one that can do decent
> multi-network tracing and break some ciphers. One needs ZKS because one
> wants to get protection from the government.

It seems to me that the list of adversarys is longer than you think.

Don't forget we're living in a world where corporations are as big 
economically as small countries. The insurance company, ISP, Microsoft, 
and possibly employer can afford a DES cracker. The ISP is obviously on 
the direct path for interception, as is the employer if she's using the 
internet at work. Microsoft presumably has some nice backdoors built in
as well.

Although many of these entities have don't a burning desire to know what
you're doing online, this isn't always the case, especially in a world
where your ISP is also a content provider who wants to make sure you're
not infringing it's copyright, your insurance company wants to know when
you do a google search on "AIDS" and your employer wants to keep you from
selling secrets to competitors.