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Fundamental Question?

5 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child

NODE a11cc94cFundamental Question?
Although I understand the need for remailers for anonymity, is it not 
true that the whole idea of encryption (good encryption, that is) is that 
no matter who gets the encrypted text, it really doesn't matter?  Does 
this not mean that something like USENET is *perfect* for this?

				-Anthony
NODE d0e92cd2Re: Fundamental Question?
| Although I understand the need for remailers for anonymity, is it not 
| true that the whole idea of encryption (good encryption, that is) is that 
| no matter who gets the encrypted text, it really doesn't matter?  Does 
| this not mean that something like USENET is *perfect* for this?

	Its awfully expensive to send messages all over creation so
one person can read them.  Much better to send it to the person who
wants to read it.  Besides, USENET propagation can be slower than
remailers; the far ends of the chain can often take around a week.

Adam

-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
						       -Hume
NODE 4c522a61Re: Fundamental Question?
Anthony Ortenzi wrote:
> 
> Although I understand the need for remailers for anonymity, is it not 
> true that the whole idea of encryption (good encryption, that is) is that 
> no matter who gets the encrypted text, it really doesn't matter?  Does 
> this not mean that something like USENET is *perfect* for this?

Well, it's happened in the past. Doesn't mean Usenet is perfect for it,
since nobody wants to sift through several thousand messages a day for
messages encrypted to him/her.  Also, imagine all the traffic sent to a
remailer duplicated on overy site that carries that Usenet group...

Rob
NODE 63b36c5bRe: Fundamental Question?
I guess that I don't have any real idea about how much traffic goes 
through remailers, myself having only used anon.penet.fi, and even that 
only to reply to others who were anonymized...  anyone have any 
approximate statistics about traffic through other remailers?

And although I know it might be a pain, could there be simple encryption 
(read: fast) that could be implemented so messages could be doubly 
encrypted, the plaintext by pgp, and the pgp text by something else and 
have the identity of the recipient inside the second encryption, where 
each message coming in could be checked to see if it should be pgp decrypted?

Maybe using a simple hash of the recipient's name or other identifying mark?

					-Anthony

On Wed, 1 Feb 1995, Robert Rothenburg Walking-Owl wrote:

> Anthony Ortenzi wrote:
> > 
> > Although I understand the need for remailers for anonymity, is it not 
> > true that the whole idea of encryption (good encryption, that is) is that 
> > no matter who gets the encrypted text, it really doesn't matter?  Does 
> > this not mean that something like USENET is *perfect* for this?
> 
> Well, it's happened in the past. Doesn't mean Usenet is perfect for it,
> since nobody wants to sift through several thousand messages a day for
> messages encrypted to him/her.  Also, imagine all the traffic sent to a
> remailer duplicated on overy site that carries that Usenet group...
> 
> Rob
> 
> 
>
NODE 60ad00ceRe: Fundamental Question?
Date: Wed, 1 Feb 95 23:00:18 EST
    From: Robert Rothenburg Walking-Owl <rrothenb@ic.sunysb.edu>

    Well, it's happened in the past. Doesn't mean Usenet is perfect for it,
    since nobody wants to sift through several thousand messages a day for
    messages encrypted to him/her.

It's easy to automate and you are incorrect in saying that nobody does
it.  alt.anonymous.messages was created as an implementation of an
anonymous message pool.  I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's
perfect, but it's simple and it works.  If you post a message
encrypted for my public key and include my name and/or my key id in
the subject, I'll get it.  And, no, I'm not the only one who uses it.

			Rick