Its possible, but expensive; this was done in the Tim MViegh trial; they linked all his calls, and then traced it to him.
With computers, this gets easier and cheaper. Social network analysis is an obvious outgrowth of the traffic analysis NSA has been doing for 60 years.
What the world needs is some kind of untraceable, unlinkable system. Attempts to deploy Digicash, Micromint, Peppercoin, blah blah have failed for various reasons.
Perhaps we need to rethink this. Perhaps the goals could be accomplished with some form of hard-to-forge physical token?
Since this would be a simpler version of the "digital coins" so often considered by researchers, I suggest the name just be shortened to "coins."
They could be round, for easy handling. And milled for evidence of having been shaved. They could even be made of precious metals for high-value coins, and of base and inexpensive metals for low-value coins.
This would solve the telephone privacy issue.
--Tim May
"That government is best which governs not at all." --Henry David Thoreau
