8.13.1. Digital espionage + spy networks can be run safely, untraceably, undetectably - anonymous contacts, pseudonyms - digital dead drops, all done electronically...no chance of being picked up, revealed as an "illegal" (a spy with no diplomatic cover to save him) and shot + so many degrees of freedom in communications that controlling all of them is essentially impossible - Teledesic/Iridium/etc. satellites will increase this capability further + unless crypto is blocked--and relatively quickly and ruthlessly--the situation described here is unstoppable - what some call "espionage" others would just call free communication - (Some important lessons for keeping corporate or business secrets...basically, you can't.) 8.13.2. Remailers needs some "fuzziness," probably + for example, if a remailer has a strict policy of accumulating N messages, then reordering and remailing them, an attacker can send N - 1 messages in and know which of the N messages leaving is the message they want to follow; some uncertainly helps here - the mathematics of how this small amount of uncertainty, or scatter, could help is something that needs a detailed analysis - it may be that leaving some uncertainty, as with the keylength issue, can help 8.13.3. Trying to confuse the eavesdroppers, by adding keywords they will probably pick up on + the "remailer@csua.berkeley.edu" remailer now adds actual paragraphs, such as this recent example: - "I fixed the SKS. It came with a scope and a Russian night scope. It's killer. My friend knows about a really good gunsmith who has a machineshop and knows how to convert stuff to automatic." - How effective this ploy is is debatable 8.13.4. Restrictions on anonymous systems - Anonymous AIDS testing. Kits for self-testing have been under FDA review for 5 years, but counseling advocates have delayed release on the grounds that some people will react badly and perhaps kill themselves upon getting a positive test result...they want the existing system to prevail. (I mention this to show that anonymous systems are somtimes opposed for ideological reasons.)
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind