I've Gotten A Bit Side Tracked Lately

I took an information security class at work, and have been looking into ways to protect information on my computer, as well as info I send out over the web via email, surfing, and instant messenger.

It's quite incredible how far technology, freely available technology, has come. The free stuff in many cases is even better than the pay stuff. Today, it's possible to surf, email and IM completely anonymously, and encrypted, by sending your message through multiple random routers. Each router only knows where it is sending to, not where it received from, and each router adds a layer of encryption. Router nodes don't cooperate with each other, so even if a router, or multiple routers in the chain, are compromised, anonymization can still be maintained. This is superior to single point of failure "Anonymizer" type single proxy solutions, and makes packet tracing all but impossible.

Now, the really cool part is that one should be able to make all of this portable - that is, these should be able to be installed on portable media, and run from any computer the media is plugged into without the need of 1) installation on the host system, 2) creation of a profile on the host system, and 3) no use of the host system non-volatile memory for cache, history, or any other data trail.

Other interesting stuff:
- one could set up a web server on the same portable media
- using the above mentioned anonymity proggie (which is actually a DARPA funded open source project, currently used by the government for anonymous data gathering in the wild), one could set up a hidden server, and/or provide hidden services by putting up the server or services in a manner so that they're only accessible by routers on the anonymization routing network I describe above.
- one could add a portable office suite to this bundle for added functionality
- add in dial-up functionality, in case you're at a location without dedicated access.
- too many more interesting things to go over.