Month: December 2014

A Meta-Data Resilient, Self-Funding “Dark” Internet Mail Idea

I’m still reading the specs on DIME, but already it’s leaving a bad taste in my mouth. It feels like it’s more or less trying to band-aid an already broken anonymous mail system, that really isn’t anonymous at all, and leaves far too much metadata lying around. Even with DIME, it looks like too much information is still exposed to be NSA proof (like sender and recipient domain names), and with all of the new moving parts, it leaves a rather large attack surface. It feels more as if DIME gives you plausible deniability, but not necessarily NSA proof anonymity, especially in light of TAO, and the likelihood at least one end of the conversation will be compromised or compelled by FISA. I could be wrong, but it at least got me thinking about what my idea of an Internet dark mail system would look like.

Let me throw this idea out there for you. We all want to be able to just write an email, then throw it anonymously into some large vortex where it will magically and anonymously end up in the recipient’s hands, right? What’s preventing that from being a reality? Well, a few things.

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