Re: Anon posts (was irritating posts...)

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Douglas Floyd wrote:
> 
> That is a good idea, creating a special USENET group for coded messages.
> Alt.security.coded.messages would be a good moniker.

Cf. Miron Cuperman's "pool" system. Subscribers get _all_ messages in
pools, decrypting only the ones they can. Others who also subscribe
can only tell that all messages went to all subscribers...ironically,
more "loggers" help increase the identity diffusity.

> Personally, I am not familar with gopherholes or message havens, so I do not
> know how good they are, and can log telnets in.  It is harder to log nntp
> reads of alt.security.coded.messages or such.  If an admin is very nosy, they
> could be snooping your terminal and packets as well, though...

As above, it doesn't matter. End to end encryption makes such logging
fruitless (unless the number of pool subscribers is very small, for
obvious reasons).

> Another idea could be an anonymous FTP site, but someone can go and delete
> all the messages on there, and ftps are logged as well...

A bad idea. Pools have major diffusivity advantages over any scheme
involving requested access. (Unless requestor takes _all_ messages, in
which case the ftp access is merely a wrinkle on how the pool is
subscribed to.)

> Any better ideas on being able to anon-post and anon-read with as few
> ways for a third party to log as possible?

Not an issue. Anon remailer chains make posting to a pool secure and
untraceable (usual caveats). Likewise, subscription to all messages
hides which are being decrypted.

To see this, think of the Cypherpunks list as one large (by today's
standards) message pool. (This is the proximate cause of this thread,
as someone is complaining about this group being used as a pool to
send anon messages to others.)

--Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."