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Re: The politics of problem playing with our constitutional rights
At 11:28 AM 9/22/97 GMT, [email protected] wrote:
>On 22 Sep 1997 02:32:12 -0500, Alan <[email protected]> wrote:
>>Mail is another hole. Eudora now distributes PGP 5.0 with the latest
>>version. (This version does not do RSA keys. You can get the plug in to do
>>those keys from PGP inc.) This is helpful, but there are many other
>>plug-ins that need to be written. Support for remailers is lacking.
>>Windows based code for Mixmaster is also a needed thing. A good interface
>>would help immensely. (Private Idaho was a big step in the right
>>direction. Integrated with a remailer people already use would be another
>>big step forward.)
>Agreed. I think Remailer support could be a big opportunity. People may
>not understand/care-about encryption, digital signing, etc., but they
>definitely understand the need for anonymity.
Give the people what they want.
>Question: If a free remailer plugin for eudora is released, can the
>remailers handle the increased load? Are there enough remailers?
>People will not tolerate more than a 24 hour delay for getting their
>messages delivers. What about spamming?
Use hashcash, or even better, digital cash of your chosen currency.
It costs 32 cents to mail a first class letter. Is it worth paying that to
send an anonymous email through a chain of a dozen remailers using a Eudora
plug-in, or a java applet? For some people it is, if it's made easy to do.
If a thousand people used it each day, that would mean $320 every 24 hours,
or $116,800 a year to be divided up amongst the 12 remailer operators.
Similar possibilities exist for remailer pinging services and nymservers.
>>I am sure that people can think of all sorts of other ideas for needed
>>apps. But to make them usable for the "general public", the apps will be
>>needed to be written for Windows. (As much as I hate to think about it...)
Why not rewrite Windows? Call it Secured Windows (or S/Win). Features
might include:
- no swapfile, or at least one that is securely deleted each
time the system is shut down
- automatically overwrite __ times when deleting information
from the hard drive
- digital cash wallet app
- S/WAN or SSH-type access to ISP
- library of different encryption apps, including an easy way
to quickly encrypt all sensitive files
Initially S/Win would be useful for emerging ecommerce businesses, and also
companies and individuals handling sensitive data (i.e., accountants,
lawyers, etc.). As ecommerce begins to evolve, people doing high-value
transactions (like buying stocks and other financial instruments) will want
to know they aren't getting bogus stock ticker prices (a la IP-spoofing) so
they don't unintentionally "sell the farm" at the wrong moment.
Maybe it's a crazy idea to rewrite Windows, but seeing as so many people are
familiar with it already, why not make it more useful/better/secure?
When the majority of computer owners realize that their emoney transactions
can be compromised on an unsecure platform like Windows, they will demand a
"product" like S/Win. After all, what good is your personal Verisign
certificate (a public key) -- not to mention SET -- if the corresponding
signing/authentication (secret) key can be swiped off your computer by a
malicious Active X control along with the keystroke sequence of your
passphrase?
-g
"It sucks being a control freak during an information revolution."