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- The network in my imagination consists of Postal Workers,
Directories, and Clients.
- Bob (a Client), lists the Postal Worker(s) that bring(s) him his
messages in one or more Directories.
- To send Bob a message, Alice (another client) puts it into an
envelop that only Bob can open. Then she queries the directory to
find out who Bob’s Postal workers are and puts the FIRST envelop
into ANOTHER ONE, that only one of Bob’s Postal Workers can open.
(She can also send copies of the message to more than one of Bob’s
Postal Workers if she wants to, just to make sure he gets it).
- Finally, Alice puts the SECOND envelope into a THIRD envelope,
that only one of her own Postal Workers can open. (Again, she can
give copies of her message to more than one Postal Worker if she
wants to take extra precautions to ensure that the message gets
delivered).
- Alice’ Postal Worker knows who the message is from, but not who
it’s for. All he knows is which other Postal Worker he’s supposed to
give it to.
- When Bob’s Postal Worker opens his envelope, he doesn’t know who
the message came from or what’s in it; all he knows is who it’s for.
This is how Tor works.
- When Bob receives Alice’ message, he can check to see whether her
finger prints are on it. (He can also refuse to accept messages from
people he isn’t already friends with).
- Bob doesn’t need to search the network for social media posts or
other types of messages from Alice; instead, she just sends all her
posts directly to one or more of the Postal Workers that work with
Bob (or with any of her other subscribers).
- If there is a particular document Bob wants, he doesn’t need to
search the network for it; he can just send Alice a request for the
document, via whatever Postal Workers are in touch with her. Only
Alice will know what Bob is asking her for, and only Bob gets to see
the document. No one else even knows that the two of them are
communicating with each other.
- If Alice’ Postal Workers wanted to spy on her, they would have
to persuade Bob’s postal workers to collaborate with them, and that
might be difficult to do if Bob was paying them enough money.
- If the government wanted to spy on Alice, they would have to
force Alice’ Postal Workers to spy on her, and they would have to
know Alice was talking to Bob – something not even her own Postal
Workers would know – so that they could also force Bob’s Postal
workers to spy on him.
- The likelihood of any one government forcing all the Postal
Workers in the world to turn over all their envelopes all the time
is low – and Bob and Alice could still protect against it by
secretly working with an extra set of Postal Workers that they
chose not to list in any Directory.
- A government could, theoretically, pass a law against operating
as a Postal Worker. But it would be difficult to enforce, and
Clients in that country would just start send their messages through
Postal Workers in other countries.
- People could be incentivized to serve as Postal Workers by
strongly-held beliefs, or by charging a fee. As someone else pointed
out, “there will always be some Russian server willing to take your
money in exchange for serving your posts.”
- Finally, there could be public review boards where Clients
could post ratings and reviews of Postal Workers, to help other
Clients decide who to work with and depend on.