Natural Privacy Preservation Protocol for electronic mail

Espionage plays a major role in military and paramilitary cyber warfare activities. While cyber espionage is mainly considered as the act of obtaining (confidential) information using illegal, technical methods, we have explored the possibilities of obtaining confidential material with technical methods using legal exploits. Due to routing conventions, messages containing confidential information may be sent through different states and herewith through conflicting communities. The servers that are used in this routing process are subject to the corresponding states legal system. In the case of electronic mail (e-mail), back-ups or copies being made are accessible to the corresponding authorities and/or private institutions. These copies of e-mails may be requested without knowledge of the sender or the sender's state and can be kept for an uncontrollable period of time. This may also heighten the risk of disclosure for encrypted messages. We have developed a concept based on IPv6 to allow static and dynamic adjustment of the selected routes to maintain the specified or expected level of confidentiality. This concept may be developed further to be used as a privacy enhancing technology. The concept increases the level of control of transmitted data, technically enforces the expected or negotiated level of privacy and confidentiality, allows data tracking and heightens the user's awareness regarding the differences between postal and electronic mail.