-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 11:37 AM +0100 on 7/1/02, Ben Laurie wrote:
> Hmm. So present the appropriate definition? Well, like I said, (and to be completely pedantic about it :-)), it seems to me that logically there's no such thing as an "anonym" even though you could do pseudonymous things that are, prima facie, and probably functionally, anonymous. The closest thing might be a string of single-use keys, pseudonyms, as we've said, or, in the "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" of motel register fame (or user "cypherpunks", password "writecode"), everyone using the same key, to using a key, or name as we (and now a dictionary somewhere, though my spell-check dictionary flags it :-)), have also said, is to create an *alternate* name or key for yourself, which is, by definition, a pseudonym, even if it is used once, and unlinked to any other event somehow. And, to throw a curve into the whole discussion, there's also the "fist" everyone uses on the net, like the fist that people had when keying Morse Code. Or, more recently, the words, syntax, semantics, "concordance", whatever, that they use when writing or talking. That stuff has has been used in literature -- to apparent lesser effect more recently with Shakespeare, and to greater effect with Joel Klien, for instance. Or the way we buy or things in an electronic market, or by mousing around the web. That kind of stuff, as Carl Ellison has noted, is probably as good a biometric as there might ever be, given enough data, so certainly a persistent pseudonym can't be anonymous in the sense of unlinked behavior to itself. Frankly, since we still live in a world of physical IP addresses, and apparently, given the ZKS experience, a still uneconomical way of mixing those addresses, traffic analysis, as usual, is still quite a bitch. Only when we can change the economics of pseudonymity will we have anything approaching anonymity, in other words. If it's cheaper to do things anonymously -- especially financial things, which are at the core of most traceable, most linkable, literally "accountable", "transparent" activity, right now -- then we'll get closer and closer to anonymity. So, maybe there isn't such a "thing" as an anonym, even though we know what anonymity is. We can make generalizations about anonymity all the time. The ultimate generalization being that anonymity, like security and cryptography themselves, is more of an economic asymptote than anything else. Something like perfection; as Anselm said in trying to prove the existence of God before the concept of calculus and limits would have shown him the error of his ways :-), something that we can conceive in our mind, if not actually see in reality. We can probably get close enough to be free, however, even in a world of ubiquitous optical supervision of private property. Dramatically freer than we are now, certainly, which is all that matters. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 7.5 iQA/AwUBPSBYzMPxH8jf3ohaEQKAVACfYeUm0QMu3PIcj9IacILb4S5t87AAoIZJ B51jtZMJN0l+bOITjKVqK5Rn =dZrT -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
