FITUG e.V. Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft

FC: Anonymity researchers present new ways to cloak your

------- Forwarded message follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 11:21:45 -0400 From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com> To: politech@politechbot.com Subject: FC: Anonymity researchers present new ways to cloak your identity Send reply to: declan@well.com

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,43355,00.html

You Can Hide From Prying Eyes By Declan McCullagh (declan@wired.com) 2:00 a.m. April 27, 2001 PDT

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania -- It's a refrain so common it's unremarkable: Privacy is dead on the Net, and being able to shield your identity online is about as likely as winning the lottery. Twice.

Just don't tell that to the researchers who gathered this week for the fourth Information Hiding Workshop, an event that's on the front lines of the pitched battle over anonymity vs. traceability.

These roughly 100 scientists, engineers, and mathematicians don't want you to have to rely on the law to shield your online identity from prying eyes. After all, laws can change, some countries lack legal protection, and even websites you trust may surreptitiously leak information or suffer security breaches.

Instead, they believe, anonymity-enhancing technologies should allow you to not hand over personal information in the first place: Call it the minimalist approach to privacy.

On Thursday, Ulf Moeller, a researcher at Zero Knowledge Systems in Montreal, described the company's ongoing efforts to improve its Freedom product, which provides privacy-protected Web surfing and e-mail.

He said that while Freedom is relatively speedy and not vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks, it is somewhat more prone to "traffic analysis."

No, he's not talking about counting cars on highways. He means that someone who wanted to know if Alice is sending e-mail to Bob would -- through something like the FBI's Carnivore system -- intercept messages that leave Alice's computer and arrive at Bob's.

[...]

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