RE: Remailers and ecash

[Fisher Mark <FisherM@exch1.indy.tce.com>]

First, some axioms:
1) Remailers help defeat traffic analysis.

2) The remailer network is small, because there is no commercial
incentive.

3) Traffic through remailers is politically and commercially sensitive.


These axioms lead me to argue that, in the current worldwide political
climate, the most that can be expected is that the remailer network will
expand only by commercial but underground remailers accepting anonymous
digital cash on a per-message basis.  Why?:

1) Commercial -- because most people don't have enough spare resources
to devote them to an effort of this magnitude.

2) Underground -- because in most of the world, there will be a category
of messages that the local government will find unacceptable.  If the
remailer is in the industrialized part of the world, these governments
will have the resources to crack down on the remailer, possibly
comprising the remailer system in the process.  (Remailers in
non-industrialized or semi-industrialized areas will not be stable
enough due to infrastructure problems.)

3) Anonymous digital cash on a per-message basis -- because anything
else is subject to government and/or commercial/organizational coercion.
Keeping accounts at several remailers will mark you as surely as if you
advertised the holding of these accounts on your Web.  Per-message
anonymity of payment is the only way to significantly increase the work
factor of those trying to break through your veil of anonymity.
==========================================================
Mark Leighton Fisher          Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com          Indianapolis, IN
"Their walls are built of cannon balls, their motto is 'Don't Tread on
Me'"