encrypted anonymous traffic

Mr. Wells:

I strongly am against your policy of prohibiting encrypted traffic
through your server, and your apparent monitoring of existing plaintext
information. I believe you should make this severe & oppressive
restriction (the former) and breach of privacy, confidentiality, and
trust (the latter) clear in your introductory statements to your
server. While providing this service of anonymity is commendable, it is
worthless without minimum levels of functionality and assurance, and
IMHO outlawing encrypted traffic is bordering on that line.

You `defuse' J. Helsingius's suggestion of comparing your service with
the post office by comparing it with the exchange of bombs in parcels,
saying that `analogies are slippery'. Indeed, you have slipped out of
this one and away from the crucial point. No one can send any `bomb'
through mere text, and to compare harassing mail (which is definitely
not to be condoned) to it is to expose your naive and self-serving view
of the matter.

I have a theory that one major motivation toward running such a server
is a somewhat paternalistic desire to `monitor' traffic through one's
server to one's `family'. Far better to do this with your own family
than through a public service, where it is inappropriate, deplorable,
and voyeristic.  That you arbitrarily restrict traffic to that which
you can read is a rather embarrassing indictment of your intentions,
despite your lame protestations that just the `capability' is relevant.
Anonymity and encryption are as interlinked as two sides of a hand. Who
are you to shear one half away?

Sincerely,
L. Detweiler

I have better things to do with my time than deal with abusive
messages. If you have something you would like me to consider,
you will, first, remove all personal remarks from your message,
and, second, you will refrain from rhetoric and give me reasons.

I have to disagree with Lance here.

>> No one can send any `bomb' through mere text, and to compare harassing
>> mail (which is definitely not to be condoned) to it is to expose your
>> naive and self-serving view of the matter.

I know people who would probably rather receive an explosive in the
mail than receive email from certain individuals, or about certain
subjects.  Physical damage can be easier to heal.  Your requirements
are not everyone's.

Although I believe myself that encryption and anonymity go
hand-in-hand, I can understand that some members of the community Mr.
Wells serves might not quite agree with me.  As long as he makes the
fact that he audits posts absolutely clear, beforehand, to his users,
I have no problem with what he does.  I am free to find a remailer
operator with less restrictive policies, and will do so.  

Cypherpunks have been talking about a free market where users choose
the anonymity services they like best.  I see no reason to berate Mr.
Wells about his policies.  Make sure he discloses his policies, and
let the users vote with their packets.  Enforcing a standard, any
standard, is a Very Bad Thing.

		Marc

Marc Horowitz says:
> I have to disagree with Lance here.
> 
> >> No one can send any `bomb' through mere text, and to compare harassing
> >> mail (which is definitely not to be condoned) to it is to expose your
> >> naive and self-serving view of the matter.
> 
> I know people who would probably rather receive an explosive in the
> mail than receive email from certain individuals, or about certain
> subjects.

To begin with, the ban on encrypted messages makes no sense because
people who do not have the key to read the messages can obviously not
receive them, and even people who do have the key must make an active
effort to read the messages. I will ignore that for the moment,
however, and address this pervasive notion that words can cause more
harm than letter bombs.

I'm sorry, but its completely irrational to prefer to be killed by an
explosive over getting email from someone you hate. This insane notion
that words are somehow worse than physical blows has to stop.

It leads to insane conclusions, among others, the conclusion that we
must all be restricted in our speech at all times lest we offend
other's feelings. This is the same argument that fundamentalist
christians who would like to ban certain books from our libraries
would use -- that harm can be caused by people accidently reading the
books. This is no speculative notion -- the argument was once actually
used regularly in our country.

The real world contains lots of harmful things. People who are so
incapable of handling a threatening letter or an insulting piece of
mail that they would prefer to die from a letter bomb are unlikely to
be able to deal with the sights and sounds they will see on an
ordinary street in a big city. They are too fragile for this world and
likely should be locked up for their own good until psychiatrists can
manage to heal them, as the preference of death to being offended is
suicidal and the incapacity to deal with the real world will obviously
cripple them. The rest of the world should not be constrained to
handle the needs of these obviously very mentally unbalanced
individuals.




Perry Metzger

On Wed, 18 Aug 1993 12:20:51 -0400, "Perry E. Metzger" <pmetzger@lehman.com> said:

>I'm sorry, but its completely irrational to prefer to be killed by an
>explosive over getting email from someone you hate. This insane notion
>that words are somehow worse than physical blows has to stop.

I'm sure glad you wrote this.  It's about time some common sense got
injected into this thread.  


>It leads to insane conclusions, among others, the conclusion that we
>must all be restricted in our speech at all times lest we offend
>other's feelings. 

And I'm glad you pointed this out.  I hadn't looked at it this way,
but I see now it's a clear extension from the "words are worse than
bombs" philosophy.

Mike

On Aug 18,  1:09pm, Mike Rose wrote:
> 
> >It leads to insane conclusions, among others, the conclusion that we
> >must all be restricted in our speech at all times lest we offend
> >other's feelings. 
> 
> And I'm glad you pointed this out.  I hadn't looked at it this way,
> but I see now it's a clear extension from the "words are worse than
> bombs" philosophy.


It also leads to talk about strong crypto as if it were assault rifles.

"Perry E. Metzger" writes:
>
>To begin with, the ban on encrypted messages makes no sense because
>people who do not have the key to read the messages can obviously not
>receive them, and even people who do have the key must make an active
>effort to read the messages. I will ignore that for the moment,
>however, and address this pervasive notion that words can cause more
>harm than letter bombs.
>

  Stupidity is it's own virtue.

  If people, who are afraid of fat electrons crowding their email-box,
don't bother to _read_the_manual_ that's their fault.  There's a
wonderful tool called the "filter", that can protect these virtual
innocents from themselves.  Unfortunately, no such device exists
for _real_mail_.  If they don't want email from certain individuals,
then they can put those people into the filter and ignore them 
as blissfully as they ignore reality itself.

  Just my $0.02 worth.

-- 
Allan Bailey, UNIX programmer, CSC          | "Freedom is not free."
Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations | allan.bailey@tamu.edu
GCS -d+ p--- c++++ l+++ u++ e++ m++ s n+ h+ f g+ w+ t+ r y+