CDR: Re: Re: would it be so much to ask..

[petro]

I said:
>On Tue, 19 Sep 2000, petro wrote:
>
>>  	If it allows *ANY* back trace, it's not anonymous.
>
>That's not necessarily true. I believe both onion routers and ZKS both
>provide this (at least in principle).
>
>I also believe there is something in ZKS about their mixing being secure
>against themselves...?

	The key word in that sentence was "trace", meaning just 
that--a trace. In the pseudononymous remailers there is a back trace 
to follow. With encrypted reply blocks, we *assume* that back tracing 
is well nigh impossible--and with an appropriate end-point (say the 
final hop is to a mail->news gateway) is pretty much dead certain to 
be fully anonymous.

	I haven't looked at ZKS stuff yet, since they don't have a 
Macintosh version, and I don't have Linux installed at home any more. 
(Only OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, MacOS 9 and X. I think that's enough 
for now), and I really don't feel that I'm qualified to judge the 
onion routing stuff. Well, Ok, I'm probably not qualified to judge 
the ZKS stuff either.

	Either way, if the ability to map email address to meat space 
identity is less than very, very hard for a government to do 
*technically* then it really isn't anonymous.


-- 
A quote from Petro's Archives:   **********************************************
Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government 
of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? 
Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let 
history answer this question. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1st Inaugural