4 ms·

Forget the email model of public metadata. What about a new protocol where you encrypt your message and its metadata completely, and give it to everyone (for so

Forget the email model of public metadata. What about a new protocol where you encrypt your message and its metadata completely, and give it to everyone (for some N). The "address" is just the public key used to encrypt it.

ketralnis 13y ago
For a small number of messages, maybe. For the number of email messages exchanged daily on the internet? Probably not. For voice calls? Certainly not.
- DennisP 13y ago
  So then the "email" address can be the public key plus the forum you pull messages from.
oakwhiz 13y ago
I believe that this is what projects like Bitmessage are trying to solve. There are a few ways to go about this. One is to give everyone your message. To me, this seems inefficient, since not everyone wants your message. Another option is to use mix networks and distributed hashing, like Tor or Freenet. I suspect that something more useful and efficient could be created using rateless erasure forward error correction codes.
- InXorWeTrust 13y ago
  > To me, this seems inefficient, since not everyone wants your message. I would like to point out BitMessage uses streams. Streams are a collection of nodes that have a particular part of their address in common. If you have an address that is part of one of these streams, your computer will listen into that stream. So you won't download all streams keys and messages, only those that pertain to you.
hnha 13y ago
I don't trust the crypto to not be broken in 10 years so I would definitely not want everyone enabled to store my messages.
- fernly 13y ago
  The NSA keeps encrypted data (e.g. HTTPS traffic) for five years in the event that they might be able to decrypt it later if they need to. This is extremely likely with respect to HTTPS because the keys are owned by the ISPs who can be directed to hand them over, if not today, then at least when their Certs expire and new keys are generated. So HTTPS traffic is effectively as open as plaintext. Your 4096-bit-encrypted email would probably not be crackable. However, the NSA would know from the metadata that your mails were "of interest" (because they know your correspondent was someone on whom they are trying to build a case) and they can come to you and demand the key, and impose secrecy on you making it a felony if you tell anyone you had surrendered your key.

ketralnis 13y ago

For a small number of messages, maybe. For the number of email messages exchanged daily on the internet? Probably not. For voice calls? Certainly not.

DennisP 13y ago
So then the "email" address can be the public key plus the forum you pull messages from.

oakwhiz 13y ago

I believe that this is what projects like Bitmessage are trying to solve. There are a few ways to go about this. One is to give everyone your message. To me, this seems inefficient, since not everyone wants your message. Another option is to use mix networks and distributed hashing, like Tor or Freenet. I suspect that something more useful and efficient could be created using rateless erasure forward error correction codes.

InXorWeTrust 13y ago
> To me, this seems inefficient, since not everyone wants your message. I would like to point out BitMessage uses streams. Streams are a collection of nodes that have a particular part of their address in common. If you have an address that is part of one of these streams, your computer will listen into that stream. So you won't download all streams keys and messages, only those that pertain to you.

hnha 13y ago

I don't trust the crypto to not be broken in 10 years so I would definitely not want everyone enabled to store my messages.

fernly 13y ago
The NSA keeps encrypted data (e.g. HTTPS traffic) for five years in the event that they might be able to decrypt it later if they need to. This is extremely likely with respect to HTTPS because the keys are owned by the ISPs who can be directed to hand them over, if not today, then at least when their Certs expire and new keys are generated. So HTTPS traffic is effectively as open as plaintext. Your 4096-bit-encrypted email would probably not be crackable. However, the NSA would know from the metadata that your mails were "of interest" (because they know your correspondent was someone on whom they are trying to build a case) and they can come to you and demand the key, and impose secrecy on you making it a felony if you tell anyone you had surrendered your key.