"US Government gets in first"? Are other Linkers concerned that this could
have major implications for the Internet?
Technology to Hide Net Traffic Patented
Onion routing is a clever name for a technology which allows users to hide
the source and destination of their network traffic. Ordinarily, any router
that forwards packets knows where the packet is coming from and where it is
going. Using this technology, the routers are arranged like layers of an
onion and routers in one layer do not know where the packet will go in the
other layers. A patent for this technology was just granted to the US
government, which finds it useful in intelligence operations. They
basically want to hide their traffic sources when accessing sites
maintained by organizations such as terrorist groups or other foreign
intelligence targets. You can search for patent number 6,266,704 at the US
Patent Office site, or read more about the technology on the Onion Router
web page.
Patent: http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html
Onion Router: http://www.onion-router.net/
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