Anonymous internet access: How to provide truly anonymous and robust internet access?

Develop a mechanism to truly anonymously publish on the internet. The definition of the problem is this:

How to publish world visible unencrypted content without anybody being able to track the originator of that content. Furthermore this URL should be trivially accessible to search engines and such like - so that if people search for things discussed on that page, they should be able to find it. Other people should be able to trivially link to that page.

Solutions like encryption, HTTPS, sshing to your web space provider won't work - because the NSA, FBI, CIA or anybody else can subpoena them and get the unencrypted content you uploaded. The same applies for anonymizing web access providers, if they are based in the US. I am not sure about US law enforcement reach for services based outside the US.

The only usable solution I have so far is this:

  1. Somehow get hold of a credit card so you can buy webspace and pay for it without them being able to track down who you are. Or you can use free webspace. Ofcourse free webspace means there is a limit on storage.
  2. Upload all your content to this website by using a free dialup service provider connecting discreetly from a public payphone.

    OR

    Go to a public internet access point - best is a public library. Suboptimal solutions - Starbucks, Kinkos etc. and upload to the website.

In my opinion this is the most important problem the systems community needs to address! The way the internet is right now, my ISP always knows what I am downloading and uploading. And at the drop of a hat will provide this information to NSA/FBI/CIA/local law enforcement.

If you do come up with a better solution for this problem let me know. And mind you this problem will only get exacerbated with the whole ubiquitous computing and mobile computing thing.


Updated: April 28, 2003 The Tarzan system might actually work. Well problem though is, it is still being developed, and I am not convinced its performance will be much better than Freenet