Re: A Fire Upon the Deep

[Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>]

On Sat, 7 Jan 1995, Adam Shostack wrote:
> 	Anonymous mail has bandwidth costs that are only slightly
> higher than regular mail.  You could hide quite a bit in most video
> packets.  The latency is a reflection of the lack of volume, because
> volume is needed for reordering.  If your favorite remailer gets more
> mail, the latency will drop.

Anonymous e-mail that goes through a chain of N remailers will cost at
least N times as much bandwidth and have N times as much latency as normal
e-mail.  But e-mail is hardly the state-of-the-art of network
communication, while anonymous e-mail IS the state of the art for
anonymous communication.  How long will it take for the technology of
anonymous video conferencing to develope, for example?  By then, of
course, those who are not concerned with anonymity will probably have
things such as full sensory virtual interaction. 

Note that I SUPPORT anonymous communication, but its costs of bandwidth 
and latency may be a real obsticle to developing Cryptoanarchy (of the 
kind described by Tim May) if most people are not willing to put up with 
those costs.

Wei Dai
PGP encrypted mail welcome.