semi-anon test from a throwaway account part deux

[Ken Brown]

Bill Stewart wrote:
 
> I'm reading off-line, but the IP address is probably that of
> the machine at the internet cafe you're using -
> depending on how organized the cafe and someone tracing you are,
> they may be able to find you quickly, or not.
> For instance, if you're at joesinternetcafe.com,
> Joe's Internet Cafe, 1234 5th street, San Francisco,
> and Joe's system adminstrator can tell that
> .63 is the table in the corner, you may be toast.
> On the other hand, if your IP address is a
> NAT box on a DSL line connected to Pac Bell Internet,
> at a chain of coffeeshops staffed by non-technical baristas,
>          "I don't know how the router thing works.  Want donuts?"
> and you're a 17-year-old kid in a room full of
> 15-20-year-old kids playing Quake, you'll have plenty of time
> to boogie out of there before the cops show up,
> or certainly before they figure out it was you -
> unless you've threatened to nuke Washington now,
> any investigation will be after the fact,
> so the real issue is whether you paid by credit card or cash
> and whether any name you used is traceable to you.

Any Internet Cafe - well any shop with any expensive goods in it these
days - is going to have TV cameras. Probably a bad place to be for
anonymity, if what you are doing is serious enough to expect
security-service or serious police reaction. If they can't trace your
cash they might be able to trace your picture. 

In general you would want to be in the biggest place you can find of
course. The best place to hide a needle is in a pile of needles -
haystacks are the place to hide hay. 

And it would help if it was in a big city. If you want to get lost, get
lost somewhere where millions of people get lost - London, Paris, New
York, huge cities where people walk and travel by train and bus. You
finish your business & walks straight into the crowd. A few changes of
Metro/Tube whatever & you could be anywhere. The getaway car is an
obsolete idea. In a car, they can see you from orbit. Or, more to the
point, from all the little machines on the roadside that take photos of
car.

Physical anonymity is getting harder, but it's less hard in big cities.
There are a lot of anonymous people in cities. Those guys you see
sitting on the side of the road asking for money, they're anonymous. As
far as you're concerned anyway. Lost in the city. So just walk into the
biggest Internet Cafe you can find within 50 yards of a train station.

On-line anonymity probably works best through a layers of indirection of
course. RTFA :-)

Ken