Making Terminal Remailers Foreign

THIS TEXT FOR EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY. I DO NOT ADVOCATE THE BREAKING OF
ANY LAW OR OF PROVOKING CIVIL LAW ACTIONS.

                 MAKING TERMINAL REMAILERS FOREIGN

Dear Cypherpunks,

   I have been concerned about the security of remailers & their ops &
I think I have found a scheme to give them an extra magnitude of safety.
With some little reflection, it is obvious that an indiscreet user
could compromise the safety of a remailer & its op. The reckless user
could violate local laws or could provoke civil legal actions, or could
be "politically or culturally indiscreet". My general software solution
could give a safety net to the remailer w/ op.

Firstly, I would like to provide a small glossary:

Collector remailer - The 1st remailer in a remailer chain.

Fortress remailer - A remailer that, due to technological devices, is
  safe from all political, legal, & technical attacks. An ideal - no
  such thing yet.

Hardened remailer - A remailer with security between that of a State
  Sufferance remailer & a Fortress remailer. Does not allow itself
  to be used as a domestic terminal remailer. It may have other
  political & technological safeties as well. This kind of remailer is
  the subject of this post.

Inner link remailer - An inner remailer; between the collector &
  the terminal remailers.

State sufferance remailer - A remailer that has no political or software
  safeties. Allows itself to be used as a domestic terminal remailer.

Terminal remailer - The last remailer in the chain.




   My plan concerns making the terminal remailer more secure. Obviously,
the terminal remailer takes the most heat & needs more security. The
extra security should be easily achieved by putting code into the
remailer that says:
"If mail being delivered to another remailer, then continue;
 If mail being delivered to a foreign country, then continue;
 If mail being delivered to a a domestic end user (not remailer),
 then deliver that mail to a foreign remailer & instruct it to deliver
 to end user."

   This scheme would insure that for that remailer, all mail
deliveries would be foreign. If there were legal or political problems,
then that remailer would be protected by its foreign jurisdiction.
This safety would not be bulletproof, but it would greatly raise the
cost of hassling the remailer. A cautious remailer operator might
choose a remailer in a country with really bad diplomatic relations with
his own host country.

   This scheme has the advantage that it could be easily implemented by
the concerned remailer operator without depending on cooperation by
others. It would also seem to be a fairly simple coding problem. Due to
the extra security provided to the terminal remailer, the remailer user
should also be more secure. In fact, I believe it would make the whole
chain more secure.

                                    PUSH EM BACK! PUSH EM BACK!
                                    WWWAAAYYY  BBBAAACCCCK!
                                    BBBEEEAAATTTT  STATE!
                                    Gary Jeffers

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Gary Jeffers writes:
>    This scheme would insure that for that remailer, all mail
> deliveries would be foreign. If there were legal or political problems,
> then that remailer would be protected by its foreign jurisdiction.
> This safety would not be bulletproof, but it would greatly raise the
> cost of hassling the remailer. A cautious remailer operator might
> choose a remailer in a country with really bad diplomatic relations with
> his own host country.

Not _too_ awful or else the remailer might become a casualty of war. Barring 
Blitzkriegen, though, I suppose such problems can be forecast and dealt with 
as fairly minor inconveniences. Playing countries off against each other can 
be quite an effective strategy. The trick is finding countries which are 
a) fairly hostile to other countries, b) fairly permissive of free speech,
privacy etc., and c) reasonably net-connected.  Most countries would seem to 
fail at least one of these criteria w.r.t., say, the U.S.

I'm waiting to see how much headway the Church of Scientology makes against
anon.penet.fi. I've read some rather ominous comments in alt.privacy.anon-
server about their endeavors. Admittedly that case deals with a news article,
not email, but it is an example of attempted international intervention.

I suppose now someone will complain that the Scientologists are just getting
a bad rap....

- -L. McCarthy
Today's T-shirt-I-couldn't-safely-wear-in-many-countries:
"MY GOD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR GOD" (with accompanying illustration)

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L. McCarthy writes
> The trick is finding countries which are 
> a) fairly hostile to other countries, b) fairly permissive of free speech,
> privacy etc., and c) reasonably net-connected.  
> Most countries would seem to 
> fail at least one of these criteria w.r.t., say, the U.S.


Finland satisfies all these criteria with respect to the US, as
does New Zealand to a lesser extent.

In any case hostility is not really required.  Going through other
governments proper channels is as painful for governments as 
getting a building permit is for you or me.  The level of 
motivation that would lead the US government to go through some
other countries proper channels is roughly similar to the level
of motivation that would lead them to shoot someone and then claim
that the person shot was a child molester and NRA member 
resisting arrest.

Even Canada or Mexico would give quite good protection against USA
repression.   Unfortunately both countries are fairly hostile to 
free speech and might shut down the remailer for internal 
reasons.

But because the internet is world wide, all attempts to censor
it are doomed, and I think it unlikely that any government,
least of all the US, will even try.

The internet can closed down, but it cannot really be controlled.


-- 
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We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we        James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.            jamesd@acm.org