[118156] in Cypherpunks
Re: Anonymous Remailers
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Broiles)
Mon Sep 20 22:24:58 1999
Message-Id: <4.2.0.58.19990920010519.00c113c0@mail.wenet.net>
Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 01:16:52 -0700
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
In-Reply-To: <199909200401.GAA06011@mail.replay.com>
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Reply-To: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
At 09:01 PM 9/19/99 , Anonymous wrote:
>Real-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
>
> > It seem possible (maybe even probable) that the boxes have been "black
> > bagged" so the operators wouldn't suspect anything. We're talking
> > about organizations that have *billions* of dollars and are extremely
> > sophisticated both technologically & operationally.
>
>Good point. It's pretty ironic that cypherpunks descend into fits of
>paranoia at the thought of using a hardware RNG, but they're willing to
>blindly trust all kinds of network connected services.
It's only ironic if your adopt a simple model of what "trust" means. If you
imagine it as a single binary state, sure, you've got a point.
I find it more useful to think about trusting certain people or
organizations to do (and not do) certain things, given certain
circumstances (which may include incentives which are aligned or opposed to
my own interests), and to a certain level of confidence.
So, if I'd like to pass along a newspaper article to Cypherpunks without
attracting the wrath of someone's in-house attorney, remailers look like a
good choice - even if they are compromised by one or more TLA's, they're
not going to blow their cover to out me as a copyright violator. Similarly,
it's unlikely that the person(s) engaged in tweaking Gary Burnore through
the remailers will be revealed, as I doubt any of the TLA's are interested
in protecting his privacy or good name, nor preserving good signal/noise
ratio on cpunks.
On the other hand, if I were planning something which I expected a TLA to
be strongly opposed to - well, I wouldn't necessarily trust remailers for that.
Basic security components like cipher suites and RNG's and encryption "OS
services" need to be trustworthy enough for use in a worst-case scenario,
not a best-case scenario. I doubt many people trust remailers in a
worst-case scenario; luckily, not so many people need to be so paranoid so
often. But I'd much prefer that the infrastructure be easily available (and
interoperable) should security become crucial rather than just a good idea.
--
Greg Broiles
gbroiles@netbox.com
PGP: 0x26E4488C
