Remailer chain length?

[Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>]

Hi Mark,

Forwarded message:

> Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 16:21:22 -0400 (EDT)
> From: "Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com>
> Subject: Re: Quickremail v1.0b
> 
> > At 17:28 1996-05-27 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
> > >I'm planning on starting up a remailer, probably on Lance's machine (to
> > >take advantage of his expertise) sometime this summer. I do want to get PGP
> > >for the VAX before then, and the MIT site doesn't appear to have this code.
> > 
> > Why would anyone set up a remailer at Lance's (or Sameer's) machine?
> > They have remailers running already. If the thugs break root and obtain
> > one remailer key from a machine, they probably get all the keys on that
> > machine, compromising all the remailers in one single attack. Or am I
> > missing something? Is there any benefit of multiple remailers on a machine
> > where root is running his own remailer?
> 
> It's better than nothing.  And besides, the more remailers there are, the
> more difficult it is to do traffic analysis on remailer traffic.  Actually,
> its the more remailers people chain messages through, but there are software
> packages that can do this easily.  The more remailers there are, the longer
> remailer chains have the possibility of becoming.

If this is strictly true, why not simply run several instances of a remailer
on the same machine. Then randomly chain them prior to sending them off
site. This would be a lot cheaper and faster than trying to convince
hobbyist to set it up or businesses to to use their profit & legal council.


                                                        Jim Choate