Making the Agora Vanish

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Mon, 16 Apr 2001, Greg Broiles wrote:

>>For instance, legislative attacks on any widespread anonymity
>>infrastructure are pretty much a given when people, most of whom have
>>precisely the kind of idealistic conception of the legal system you
>>describe, realize that law can't touch an anonymous economy.
>
>Yes, the laws can be written, and they will enjoy the same efficiency and
>success that laws against copyright violation, pornography, prostitution,
>illicit drugs, and so forth have experienced. Not only can the law not
>touch an anonymous economy, it cannot prevent one, either.

Agreed, to a degree. But it isn't very difficult to outlaw crypto, and to
effectively control its use for online anonymity - to get a workable
anonymity infrastructure, you need common protocols, participants to create
the mixnets and a certain amount of publicity to make your effort matter. It
is extremely difficult to run such a usable setup without being detected by
a determined TLA. Unlike with IP, porn, prostitution and drug trade, control
of online activities can largely be automated.

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front