Re: Many Important Items in the News

this seems to have fizzled out somewhere along the line.

------- Forwarded Message

Date: Thu, 25 Mar 93 11:54:30 EST
From: Peter Honeyman <honey@citi.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Many Important Items in the News
To: cypherpunks@toad.com

marc, if article cancellation is made cryptographically secure, there
is the possibility that articles can be made uncancellable.  of course,
if there is some wild card that allows the backbone cabal to cancel
articles remotely and after the fact, then i suspect usenet will remain
vulnerable to forged cancellation messages.  but maybe not.

i see your point about backbone admins refusing to traffic in certain
kinds of messages, but as a veteran of usenet from before it was even
called usenet, i assure you that other admins would quickly fill in the
gaps in connectivity.  this has happened many times.

i don't agree, btw, that we can rely on the backbone admins to be very
strong supporters of speech, nor should we.

as for "the guy with the disk" wanting macpgp to go away, that's not
what happened here.  everyone i've talked to that has a direct role in
the decision agrees that there is a valid research and education
function served by distributing macpgp.  ah well, sometimes the dragon
wins.

and regarding the network providers decision to pull penet's plug, i
believe this decision was based principally on the opinion of ... how
did julf put it?  ... oh yes, "a very well-known and extremely highly
regarded net personality"  (i doubt that i would regard him as a strong
supporter of free speech, btw).  i suspect that when we get to the
bottom of this, we'll discover that many people's interests were being
represented without their knowledge, assent, or agreement.

regarding your comments about net abuse and megabytes of trash, i agree
that we need to brainstorm and find ways to address these problems.
i am optimistic that technical solutions hold a lot of promise; it's just
a matter of discovering them.  let's put our shoulder to the wheel!

	peter

------- End of Forwarded Message

>marc, if article cancellation is made cryptographically secure, there
>is the possibility that articles can be made uncancellable.  of course,
>if there is some wild card that allows the backbone cabal to cancel
>articles remotely and after the fact, then i suspect usenet will remain
>vulnerable to forged cancellation messages.  but maybe not.

What you are describing here is an alternate method of cancellation,
not a forgery of the main way of cancelling.

Of course, if they really want such an alternate method of cancelling,
let's write it for them, so that it also uses signatures to check
authenticity.

>i see your point about backbone admins refusing to traffic in certain
>kinds of messages, but as a veteran of usenet from before it was even
>called usenet, i assure you that other admins would quickly fill in the
>gaps in connectivity.  this has happened many times.

All the more reason to allow the backbone admins the power to not pass
anonymous articles.  It won't work, they'll feel like they're in
control, and everyone wins.

Eric

>All the more reason to allow the backbone admins the power to not pass
>anonymous articles.  It won't work, they'll feel like they're in
>control, and everyone wins.

wait, are you advocating news admins allowed to filter anonymous mail
from downstream/upstream feeds?  I don't get this.

>>All the more reason to allow the backbone admins the power to not pass
>>anonymous articles.  It won't work, they'll feel like they're in
>>control, and everyone wins.

>wait, are you advocating news admins allowed to filter anonymous mail
>from downstream/upstream feeds?  I don't get this.

Yes.  If someone doesn't want to pass traffic, let them.  It's
extremely foolish; they'll get a bad rep for it.  If they're a
commercial site, they'll lose customers.  If they're not, they'll lose
face.  Freedom to filter is freedom to shoot yourself in the foot.

But as Peter Honeyman points out, filtering anonymous posts won't work
to prevent them from being passed around, and they'll continue to use
external channels to pressure connectivity and administration.  These
channels have no technical amelioration; doing politics in the broad
sense is the only solution for this.

Eric