[brian_cloutier]

Yes, you just have to think about networking a little differently. The problem is that we share documents over connections. Immutable documents don't really need to get to you immediately, especially now that we have webapps with UIs which update instantly and which can perform non-trivial computation.

Onion routing with something like Mixminion[1] works much like Tor, but instead of establishing connections it passes messages between routers. Messages are arbitrarily delayed, preventing even traffic analysis from finding you.

However, using an anonymous remailer like Mixminion would require completely rethinking browsers and our protocols for web browsing. They simply aren't designed for a world where packets might take minutes to get to you.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixminion

[Udo]

You're the second commenter to say that the answer to me having doubts if we can even in principle have an anonymous instant-tranfer network is: "yes, you just have to drop the instant part" ;)