Why the poor uptake of encrypted email?

[StealthMonger]

Alec Muffett <Alec.Muffett at Sun.COM> writes:

> In the world of e-mail the problem is that the end-user inherits a
> blob of data which was encrypted in order to defend the message as it
> passes hop by hop over the store-and-forward SMTP-relay (or UUCP?) e-
> mail network...  but the user is left to deal with the effects of
> solving the *transport* security problem.

> The model is old.  It is busted.  It is (today) wrong.

But the capabilities of encrypted email go beyond mere confidentiality
and authentication.  They include also strongly untraceable anonymity
and pseudonymity.  This is accomplished by using chains of anonymizing
remailers, each having a large random latency for mixing with other
traffic.

Connection-based communication such as Skype and OTR do not provide
this capability.  The hop by hop store-and-forward email network does.
This is not busted or wrong.  It's essential.


   stealthmail: Scripts to hide whether you're doing email, or when,
   or with whom.  mailto:stealthsuite at nym.mixmin.net


 -- StealthMonger
	 <StealthMonger at nym.mixmin.net>
	 <StealthMonger at nym.panta-rhei.eu.org>

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