I don't have the book with me, and my memory of this is a bit fuzzy, but this issue has bothered me.

Why is stellanor@armaz(I think).ru the e-mail address from which the footage is sent to Ohio (or wherever) for watermarking? (The e-mail's destination -- the watermarking firm -- is the only piece of info Baranov is given to work with to trace it back, if I recall.) Cayce's first e-mail to this address (after going through great difficulty to get it) gets a personal reply from Stella within minutes. Now: Given the many layers of security surrounding the origin of the footage, it seems very unlikely to me that this would be Stella's personal e-mail address AND the one from which the footage is sent for watermarking. Wouldn't Stella and Nora's operation have more than one e-mail address (or they might forward the footage elsewhere first), making it harder to trace back?

Maybe this is not so unlikely after all in other readers' opinions. Maybe this is something the reader has to accept on faith, that stretches the credulity a bit. Maybe there's an explanation I'm not seeing (or remembering). Thank you for whatever you can say about this.

yes they would likely have very many addresses

using industrial email clients you can have any number of accounts all with different addresses and locations feeding their incoming mail back to a single account or as many proxy accounts as you want

and you can send just the same way

not complicated or futuristic merely an exercise in programming skills

As razorgirl says - not a problem. I even have some adresses I don't know (I could find them, just don't bother) - the mails are forwarded without any indication of their origin. Instantly.

If I remember well (don't have the book with me), Baranov never got the email from the watermarking company in Ohio. He got it from Cayce's notebook he was sniffing.

Oh. Thanks. Duh.

Welcome aboard newcomers,

Just to set things straight. Baranov is the one who located the email address for Cayce.

First he revealed that it was a .ru domain in a cryptic anonymous Hotmail email. Upon receiving the Curta (not wanting to see it tossed into the Camden lock) he hands Cayce a business card with the address written on the back. (Chapter 31, pg. 252)

Baranov used to work for American Intelligence as a mathematician, and was living in a trailer in a former MI5 training facility. He's the kind of guy with instant access to many searchable terabytes of information (can you say Echelon?)

Boone Chu was the guy boinking girls at Sigil, and who had installed a fine bit of spyware on Cayce's pristine iBook, untainted by Asian Sluts and Penis Enlargers. Boone calls her and tells her that so far he's only found the domain armaz.ru in Chapter 34 (pg. 280)

I was all mixed up!

Don't abuse drugs.

And for those of you recent-comers who missed the excitement back in February...

yes, you too could email Stella and Nora.

http://www.collectivedetective.org/campaign/lounge/discussion/663

(... and the related pages of the same discussion)