TOR encryption

[Sarad AV]

--- On Tue, 4/7/09, coderman <coderman at gmail.com> wrote:
> In September 2007, Dan Egerstad ... [was a jerk]..."

:-)

[...] 
> not sure what you mean. Tor uses encryption to provide
> anonymity for
> TCP streams over a 3+ hop Tor circuit with authentication
> and privacy
> between each relay (onion layer).

I mean the data part. If you are sending email, the actual email content or if it is voice, the actual voice stream. Can we have an option where we can leave it to the end user to take care of its encryption. Since, we are using Onion routing we may not want the processor's spending encrypting and decrypting it 3+ times this user specific data. The TCP header maybe encrypted if it can somehow can violate anonymity but I am referring to its payload/data here. Or am I mistaken. Does Tor nodes not encrypt the payload?

Thank you,
Sarad