Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers

Cpunks:
	We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
helpless newsgroup. This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
mail) could be solved if there was a standard header keyword (or maybe 
even a new header field) that could be screened from a newsgroup. The
group would have to be semi-moderated -- an automatic filter passes on
all posts except those with the keyword in the appropriate header field.

	If anonymous posts aren't annoying enough to instigate the 
creation of such a filtered newsgroup, then they probably aren't enough
of a problem in that group to worry about.

	Words such as "anon" and "anonymous" might occur naturally in
the headers. I'd propose something like "ANONYPOST" or "ANONPOST" that 
isn't likely to occur in nature.

	Voluntary adoption of this type of standard by remailers would
take away some of the ammo that the anti-anon frothers are shooting,
and would go a long way toward improving the image of remailers in 
general.

	Comments?
	Loyd

*************************************************************************
* Loyd Blankenship        mentor@io.com                  ^              *
* Steve Jackson Games     CI$: [73407,515]              / \             *
* PO Box 18957            GEnie: SJGAMES               / O \            *
* Austin, TX  78760                                   /_____\           *
* 512/447-7866                                                          *
*************************************************************************

uunet!indial1.io.com!mentor (Loyd Blankenship) writes:

> Cpunks:
> 	We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
> here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
> helpless newsgroup. This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
> mail) could be solved if there was a standard header keyword (or maybe 
> even a new header field) that could be screened from a newsgroup. The
> group would have to be semi-moderated -- an automatic filter passes on
> all posts except those with the keyword in the appropriate header field.

Some people think that "the problem of auto-screening anonymous mail" refers 
to other folks' desire to screen anonymous mail. If a significant fraction 
of the net community responds to wider access to anonymity by filtering out 
anonymous mail, my prediction (and suggestion :) is that people who truly 
(a) wish to be heard, and (b) wish to be anonymous will resort to mail which 
is non-obviously anonymous. Forging mail in the names of actual persons, and 
using bits of real names to assemble real-looking pseudonyms (say, "Perry 
Detweiler"?) would seem to be two solutions. Posters of that flavor of 
anonymous mail might or might not make it clear that the posting isn't 
actually who it purports to be from.

I think it's probably better for us to deal with this problem now, rather 
than trying to hide from it with more shell scripts. Anonymity and its 
connection with accountability, responsibility, and coercion is a social 
issue, not a technological one. Technological attempts to address that 
social issue (or ignore it) will fail.


--
Greg Broiles
greg@goldenbear.com                     Baked, not fried.

Loyd Blankenship writes:

> 	We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
> here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
> helpless newsgroup. This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
> mail) could be solved if there was a standard header keyword (or maybe 
> even a new header field) that could be screened from a newsgroup. The
> group would have to be semi-moderated -- an automatic filter passes on
> all posts except those with the keyword in the appropriate header field.

Which reminds me of something I forgot to mention in my post yesterday
about remailer policies and the properties of "ideal mixes." Remailer
bombing (by volume, not the content) can of course be solved by
*digital postage*, the fee charged by a remailer. As with ordinary
postage, this reduces junk mail somewhat.

However, digital postage (and digital money in more general forms) is
not available now. A remailer could sell lists of numbers that act as
postage, using reputation/trust to "honor" them. (To avoid using them
for tracing, the lists could be bought from others, or traded with
others, or possibly even "blinded" a la Chaum. Digital postage is
sufficiently low-value (money-wise) that not as much attention to
detail is needed, at least not for trial use of "Pretty Good Digital
Postage.")

> 	Words such as "anon" and "anonymous" might occur naturally in
> the headers. I'd propose something like "ANONYPOST" or "ANONPOST" that 
> isn't likely to occur in nature.
> 
> 	Voluntary adoption of this type of standard by remailers would
> take away some of the ammo that the anti-anon frothers are shooting,
> and would go a long way toward improving the image of remailers in 
> general.
> 
> 	Comments?

I think it's a good idea. Eric Messick has already proposed replacing
the message names in mail with something to maker traffic analysis
harder.

For anonymous postings to newsgroups, a prefix system voluntarily
adopted by users is another approach, e.g., "ANON: The Virtues of
Anonymity."

It's doubtful that all users, or all remailers for that matter, will
ever adopt the same conventions for signalling an anonymous message,
so the problems will persist, albeit on a different scale.

Long range, a combination of pay-for-what-you-use digital postage and
"positive reputation filters" will be what a. keeps newsgroups from
being flooded with anonymous posts, and b. allows readers to find the
messages they want to read out of a huge pool of messages.


-Tim May


-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

mentor@indial1.io.com (Loyd Blankenship)
>We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
>here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
>helpless newsgroup.

you are talking about a problem associated with a *mail to new
gateway*. this is not the same as a *remailer*. In fact, the latter
operators should not have to worry about the former.

>This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
>mail) could be solved if there was a standard header keyword (or maybe 
>even a new header field) that could be screened from a newsgroup.\

although I think the idea of anonymous identification tags in the
header has `some' merit. but its an extremely problematic issue,
because it could have the effect of censoring anonymous posting.

the best goal is to allow the end user to make the decision, i.e. kill
files, and *never* put any kind of a choke upstream that would prevent
them from making that decision.

hence, the solution is to have the mail-to-news gateway reject overly
voluminous posting -- either posts that are too long, or too frequent
posting from the same address or (the latter which of course can be
thwarted to some degree) in overall frequency of accepting articles,
such that some might get bounced back to the user if the site is being bombarded.

of course, remailer operators have to guard against mail bombs too, but
not in the overly sensitive, distributed way that NNTP servers do.

says Loyd Blankenship:

> 	We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
> here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
> helpless newsgroup. This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
[...]
> 	Words such as "anon" and "anonymous" might occur naturally in
> the headers. I'd propose something like "ANONYPOST" or "ANONPOST" that 
> isn't likely to occur in nature.
> 	Voluntary adoption of this type of standard by remailers would
> take away some of the ammo that the anti-anon frothers are shooting,
> and would go a long way toward improving the image of remailers in 
> general.
> 
> 	Comments?

Sorry to respond to such an old post, but I can't let this one slip by.
Why not encourage people to be responsible for their OWN mail/news?
Relying on moderators to wipe noses and spank boodies is not going to 
help anyone in the long run.  FidoNet has had a great deal of difficulty
with moderators, and there is no need to spread this problem to UseNet.

The responsibility for you reading or not reading anon posts lies on YOUR
head.  If you do not like them, then learn to use the filtering
capabilities of your software.  If you don't have a news reader that will
do elaborate filters, try strn. 

At any rate, it is my firm opinion that moderation belongs in academic and
hard-science conferences, and those that require a very firmly focussed
range of topics to be of use.  The encouragement of more moderation, and
more moderator "jobs" like filtering out anonymous postings is a very bad
idea, and in particular, the inclusion of special headers for this purpose
will simply suggest to moderators that they filter all such mail by
default, and not even bother to try to determine relative merits.  It's
counterproductive to the entire idea of anonymous posting. 

-- 
DISCLAIMER: This message represents only my OWN opinion, not that of EFF.
Stanton McCandlish    Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist
mech@eff.org          NitV-DataCenter BBS SysOp
Fido: <tba>           IndraNet: 369:111/1

Stanton:

Actually, I think you're missing Loyd's point here. Basically, we 
really wanted to set up an anonymous remailer here at Illuminati
Online. We encountered opposition from a certain individual on the
grounds that "anonymous posts can destroy civil conversation" and
individuals, groups and lists "should have the right to easily 
filter out posts from anonymous remailers."

Although this is highly debatable (and I myself am opposed to it),
it has nothing to do with inflicting moderation where none 
exists now, and is rather a call for a voluntary standard for
tagging of posts that have been anonymized so that they can be 
filtered out wholesale. (Rather than the retail filtering that
I'm sure goes on already in some quarters.)

The advantage of this is that if a group or list or individual
decides they want nothing to do with anonymous postings in general,
they need not see them. The chief disadvantage in my mind is that
it poisons the infrastructure against the strong pseudonymous 
entities that I think will be key to an underground digital economy.
Other defects will be left as an exercise to the reader. :-)

Doug

> 
> says Loyd Blankenship:
> 
> > 	We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
> > here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
> > helpless newsgroup. This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
> [...]
> > 	Words such as "anon" and "anonymous" might occur naturally in
> > the headers. I'd propose something like "ANONYPOST" or "ANONPOST" that 
> > isn't likely to occur in nature.
> > 	Voluntary adoption of this type of standard by remailers would
> > take away some of the ammo that the anti-anon frothers are shooting,
> > and would go a long way toward improving the image of remailers in 
> > general.
> > 
> > 	Comments?
> 
> Sorry to respond to such an old post, but I can't let this one slip by.
> Why not encourage people to be responsible for their OWN mail/news?
> Relying on moderators to wipe noses and spank boodies is not going to 
> help anyone in the long run.  FidoNet has had a great deal of difficulty
> with moderators, and there is no need to spread this problem to UseNet.
> 
> The responsibility for you reading or not reading anon posts lies on YOUR
> head.  If you do not like them, then learn to use the filtering
> capabilities of your software.  If you don't have a news reader that will
> do elaborate filters, try strn. 
> 
> At any rate, it is my firm opinion that moderation belongs in academic and
> hard-science conferences, and those that require a very firmly focussed
> range of topics to be of use.  The encouragement of more moderation, and
> more moderator "jobs" like filtering out anonymous postings is a very bad
> idea, and in particular, the inclusion of special headers for this purpose
> will simply suggest to moderators that they filter all such mail by
> default, and not even bother to try to determine relative merits.  It's
> counterproductive to the entire idea of anonymous posting. 
> 
> -- 
> DISCLAIMER: This message represents only my OWN opinion, not that of EFF.
> Stanton McCandlish    Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist
> mech@eff.org          NitV-DataCenter BBS SysOp
> Fido: <tba>           IndraNet: 369:111/1
> 

-- 
----------------                                             /\ 
Douglas Barnes            cman@illuminati.io.com            /  \ 
Chief Wizard         (512) 448-8950 (d), 447-7866 (v)      / () \
Illuminati Online          metaverse.io.com 7777          /______\

Douglas Barnes wrote:

>Actually, I think you're missing Loyd's point here. Basically, we 
>really wanted to set up an anonymous remailer here at Illuminati
>Online. We encountered opposition from a certain individual on the
>grounds that "anonymous posts can destroy civil conversation" and
>individuals, groups and lists "should have the right to easily 
>filter out posts from anonymous remailers."

Hey Doug,

Well, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm one who doesn't favor
labelling anonymous mail - I'd rather work on positive reputation
schemes, cash accepting remailers, etc.  An anonymous remailer that
charges will discourage people from using it for frivolous purposes;
digital signature combined with positive filters will let people
filter out posters they consider stupid.

After all, you are more interested in who sent the mail than where it
originated from.

(I've been working on a script that checks elm mail folders for pgp
signed messages and reports the signature instead of From: address;
and a cash accepting remailer).

The attitude expressed by the individual on io.com shows a problem we
will have in educating others - "anonymous posts CAN destroy a civil
conversation".  Yes, maybe so, but in my experience on mailing lists,
bbses, etc. I've noticed that "flame wars" and "anonymous posts" have
NO correlation, and are quite independent of one another.  

Since I've seen "flame wars" on systems with absolutely no anonymous
posting facilities (or none that were used), I conclude that civil
conversation is destroyed by strongly held differences in opinions (or
some other factor I can't pin down).

However, I would be interested in hearing if filtering anonymous
mail/posts does significantly cut down on or eliminate the destruction
of civil conversation.

-- 
Karl L. Barrus: klbarrus@owlnet.rice.edu         
keyID: 5AD633 hash: D1 59 9D 48 72 E9 19 D5  3D F3 93 7E 81 B5 CC 32 

"One man's mnemonic is another man's cryptography" 
  - my compilers prof discussing file naming in public directories