[mistercow]

Essentially what you're proposing is a DoS of the tracking system. The problem with that (at least with physical mail) is that it takes far more resources to generate physical mail than to scan it. A DoS shaped like that will never work unless you have some way of massively amplifying the effect you are having.

Postage on a post card is currently 33 cents. How many postcards do you reckon you'd have to send before the automatic scanning process costs even one cent extra?

[atgm]

> Postage on a post card is currently 33 cents. How many postcards do you reckon you'd have to send before the automatic scanning process costs even one cent extra?

It seems like it would be a self-defeating process since the cost built into sending "data flak" would pay for the services monitoring it.

[jasonkolb]

I've been thinking about the fact that a data-generation machine would be incredibly destructive to the current intelligence system. Spend a little bit of resources on a system that will manage and nurture online personas and you could render the algorithms watching things useless.

Misdirection: it's been used in magic for a long, long time.

So what happens when a piece of software can be used as a terrorist device? We're going to run into that. Soon.

[malandrew]

I would imagine the DoS is half of the benefit. The other half is manufactured reasonable doubt.

If a person were to send periodic letters with real and fake cryptographic messages to random individuals of importance, barring a warrant to read the contents of each letter, that would constitute reasonable doubt as to whether or not that person was legitimately communicating with another person of interest.

[mistercow]

It would also likely be taken as suspicious in its own right.

[malandrew]

True, but given the facts of the past few weeks, it's completely reasonable to set up such a system like this now for yourself as a hedge for what the political landscape may look like in the future. I know what is illegal today, but I have no idea what may be made illegal tomorrow or 10 years from now. Implementing such a system is a hedge/insurance against dystopian futures that are becoming reality.

As long as such a system is in place and significantly predates (on the scale of years) any crime you are accused of, this argument of hedging against a dystopia makes a lot more sense and is far more defensible.

[finnw]

> I know what is illegal today

That is impressive, even if you are a lawyer.

[malandrew]

Hehe. Yeah, I know. :)

[javajosh]

Yes, they might suspect that I value the freedoms that so many have fought and died for that I would, shockingly, moderately inconvenience myself to do so.

[dredmorbius]

Which means you could undertake the activity on behalf of those you wished to implicated.

[GoodIntentions]

>>Postage on a post card is currently 33 cents.

why put a stamp on if you don't care about where it goes? better yet, put a 1 cent stamp on and make sure it gets extra handling for postage due.