Tyler Durden wrote:
Sorry...I don't understand...why would psuedonymity services be provided within Tor?
I find the concept of having both pseudonymous and anonymous traffic through TOR quite interesting. In some cases, you really do wish to just separate yourself from your meatspace identity but you may want the reputation of a bitspace identity; in other cases, you want to completely separate yourself from any identity. There are audited anonymizers that provide a form of pseudonymity, in that, they know who you are and can regulate your behavior accordingly. These are generally in the commercial space. Building a TOR nymspace would be much more interesting and distributed. TOR itself does not necessarily have to deal with this. There could be services flowing through TOR that provide this. However, TOR nodes implementing pseudonymous traffic for their own network seems more natural and easier to do. Entry/exit nodes, some nodes, all nodes, or whatever subset makes the most sense could then authenticate pseudonymous traffic and determine capabilities based on things like reputation. But, that was not a why. Anonymity has the property of removing responsibility from the actor for their actions, which is not always a good thing. I am sure TOR exit nodes are hit with the responsibility for those actors, which can lead to the end of exit nodes. At a minimum, pseudonymity can provide a degree of responsibility through reputation. Exit nodes could support either pseudo or anon, or both, depending on beliefs, risks, etc. Also, users could select anon or pseudo as needed. I like choice. Anyway, that is a why and an interesting topic, but TOR has other things to focus on. -Andrew
