Re: Message Havens, Pools, and Usenet

* Posting to a newsgroups allows piggy-backing on two things:

	1. The world-wide distribution (in most cases) of newsgroups. The
	newsgroups are distributed to zillions of local sites, making
	attempted analysis of who is checking for messages all the more
	difficult.

I think this is the way to go, and I don't think we need special
groups for it either.  Tim, just as an experiment, post a message
to any group you like (except netcom ones!) with 'gtoal' in it
somewhere (innocuously, like in a .sig), and I'll show you how easy
it is to find stuff that's addressed to you.

Of course, anyone else can find it too - you can't hide that the
message was posted, but you certainly can't track who read it.

G

> From: Graham Toal <gtoal@an-teallach.com>
> I think this is the way to go, and I don't think we need special
> groups for it either.  Tim, just as an experiment, post a message
> to any group you like (except netcom ones!) with 'gtoal' in it
> somewhere (innocuously, like in a .sig), and I'll show you how easy
> it is to find stuff that's addressed to you.

Mass kibozing is certainly an option for the receiver, but I think
this scheme is going to provoke loud complaints from most sysadmins
if it ever gets off the ground.  I agree with Karl's comments re
"havens" that it's unnecessary to look at "if the whole planet did
that, the net would implode" scenarios.  But sending encrypted
private mail to Usenet would become problematic even with light use,
a few hundred or a thousand people.  A thousand people times 50
messages per day is already 50,000 daily -- what's Usenet's daily
traffic these days?  And anon.penet.fi has more than a thousand
active users, and I get a lot more than 50 messages a day.

There are social strictures in place against broadcasting private
mail via Usenet, except possibly as a last resort.  If you encourage
people to put encrypted chunks on every system in the world so one
person can read them, you will probably be held in the same regard
as Canter and Siegel.  If you want to promote this, please don't
say anything about "cypherpunks"...

   Eli   ebrandt@hmc.edu