Re: REMAIL: Cover traffic

[jdblair@nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU]

Jim Miller writes,

> How about extending the "send bogus messages" idea all the way out to the  
> users of the remailer system?  Part of the price of using the remailer  
> system is that you will occasionally receive a bogus message.
> 
> How might this work?
> 
> Assume remailers know the addresses of all (or most) of the other  
> remailers.  In other words, assume a given remailers knows if an inbound  
> message came from another remailer, or came from a non-remailer address.
> 
> All inbound messages to a remailer from a non-remailer address would be  
> considered a "use" of that remailer.  A remailer would maintain a list of  
> the addresses of "users" and would occasionally send bogus messages to a  
> randomly selected entry from its user list.  Inclusion into the list would  
> be automatic.  The list would be a large, but fixed sized FIFO, with old  
> entries dropping off the end automatically.
> 
> If the remailer system uses Digital Postage, then perhaps the bogus  
> message could be a token for a free Digital Stamp, good for one message.

However, there would be a record of addresses which anonymous mail had
been sent to- probably not a good idea.  Julf's anonymizer has such a
record, but I thought part of the idea of the cypherpunk remailers was to
eliminate these records.

I do find the digital postage discussion interesting... perhaps this would
be a way Julf could pay the bills on his system.  How exactly would this
work?  Would a "stamp" be a large random number?  Would a stamp be tagged
to prevent use by another user, or remain individually anonymous, but PK
encrypted to the purchaser?  Would full fledged Chaumian digital cash be
implemented?

Perhaps creating remailer stamps would be the best way to actually
implement a test bed for the Cypherpunk Credit union.  Start small with
remailer stamps, work the bugs out of the system, then slowly expand.

-john
jdblair@nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu