Remailers-in-a-box

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Tim May wrote:

> I am waiting for such services to be actually, formally, solidly
> announced, not just casual remarks that it might be possible. And of
> course the software should be "ready to wear," port-a-potty, so that
> the remailer account owner does nothing more than pay for the account.

In this model, who deals with mailbombs/spams/requests for address blocks?
It is this sort of administrivia (plus the threat of liability) that
makes running a remailer troublesome, not a lack of someone's $20/month.

I think it's disingenuous to say that "X pays the bills for the network
link; X purchased the hardware and keeps it running; the box is in X's
house/office; X is the person who reads complaint mail and responds (or
fails to); but because Y sends X $20/month, the remailer (and attendant
liability for its mis/use) belongs to Y." I realize that there's a 
certain formal logic to it, but I don't think that anyone - not courts,
and not the world-in-general - is going to pay attention to that 
formalism when it's clear that a machine essentially under the control
of X is being used for 'antisocial' means.

I'm seriously considering offering this sort of remailer-in-a-box
thing, but there's a certain amount of hassle associated with running
a remailer. It can be shifted to different parties, but it must be
paid for one way or another.  

I guess it'd be possible to treat remailers as disposable - when one
had pissed off enough people, it could be abandoned - but this lack
of long-term reliability seems poor.
 

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Greg Broiles wrote:

> Tim May wrote:
> 
> > I am waiting for such services to be actually, formally, solidly
> > announced, not just casual remarks that it might be possible. And of
> > course the software should be "ready to wear," port-a-potty, so that
> > the remailer account owner does nothing more than pay for the account.
> 
> In this model, who deals with mailbombs/spams/requests for address blocks?
> It is this sort of administrivia (plus the threat of liability) that
> makes running a remailer troublesome, not a lack of someone's $20/month.

In this model the owner of the machine (who is not himself a remailer,
only a seller of accounts) simply ignores all such issues of
mailbombs, spams, request for address blocks. He has a form letter
than says something like:

"I am not the initiator of any mail bombs, spams, or illegal mail. I
merely sell accounts, like private mail boxes. Some of the mail you
are objecting to may have originated on my system, some may merely
have passed through my system, just as mail passes through many
systems from sender to receiver. If you have problems, talk to the
sender, not to me. Under the ECPA I cannot even _look_ at the mail on
my system, and even if it were legal, I would not."


> I think it's disingenuous to say that "X pays the bills for the network
> link; X purchased the hardware and keeps it running; the box is in X's
> house/office; X is the person who reads complaint mail and responds (or
> fails to); but because Y sends X $20/month, the remailer (and attendant
> liability for its mis/use) belongs to Y." I realize that there's a 
> certain formal logic to it, but I don't think that anyone - not courts,
> and not the world-in-general - is going to pay attention to that 
> formalism when it's clear that a machine essentially under the control
> of X is being used for 'antisocial' means.

It likely buys a couple of years of protection, though. Currently the
remailer sites = remailer accounts, so they have little or no
protection.

I don't think "disingenuous" as very apt description. For one thing,
my proposal certainly doesn't make things any _worse_ for the true
remailers. 

--Tim May


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> I don't think "disingenuous" as very apt description. For one thing,
> my proposal certainly doesn't make things any _worse_ for the true
> remailers. 

Sorry if I was unclear; I didn't mean that you were being disingenuous,
just that the assignment of responsibility/culpability in at least 
some of the schemes being discussed looks suspect to me.

I do think that this plan can create greater risk for the owners of
machines which operate remailers - what if one of their customers 
decides not to block traffic to whitehouse.gov, or to
alt.religion.copyright, or whatever? Neither the SPA nor the Secret
Service has acted particularly cluefully with respect to seizing
hardware or conducting unnanounced destructive "fishing" expeditions.
As things stand today, I have some control (via my filter list) of
the risks I'm willing to assume and not assume. If I let people with
no real stake in the matter gamble with my machine based on their own
choices about filtering, that looks like a loss to me.

(Of course, the machine owner can always, via contract, set certain
terms - e.g., addresses which must be filtered. This starts to look
like active participation in the administration of the remailer, which
makes the off-site operator structure seem less legitimate.)


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From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)

   In this model the owner of the machine (who is not himself a remailer,
   only a seller of accounts) simply ignores all such issues of
   mailbombs, spams, request for address blocks.

   [the form letter might include]
   "If you have problems, talk to the
   sender, not to me."

In order to make such a discharge anywhere near believable, you'd have
to provide a way for the complainant to get in touch with the sender.
The sender in this case is the remailer operator.  It would also be a
standard courtesy to forward the misdirected mail.

   Currently the
   remailer sites = remailer accounts, so they have little or no
   protection.

One of the services that RiaB might do well to offer is subdomaining.
It's pretty easy to direct all subdomain mail, which includes
postmaster mail, to a single email address.

Eric

From: Greg Broiles <greg@ideath.goldenbear.com>
    Date: Fri, 20 Jan 1995 17:28:58 -0800 (PST)
    
    Tim May wrote:
    
    > I am waiting for such services to be actually, formally, solidly
    > announced, not just casual remarks that it might be possible. And of
    > course the software should be "ready to wear," port-a-potty, so that
    > the remailer account owner does nothing more than pay for the account.
    
    In this model, who deals with mailbombs/spams/requests for address blocks?

With sameer's recently announced RIAB, it seems quite reasonable that
Tim could follow the instructions that were sent out and when he gets
to this one:

 3) If you wish, you can setup a .forward file to point to mailfilters
 or to another account. 

then he could do this:

 % echo 'tcmay@netcom.com' > ~/.forward

and then he would never have to log into c2 again.

This is not quite at the level of what Tim explicitly stated:
``remailer account owner does nothing more than pay for the
account.'', but it's about as close as one could hope for while
addressing your concerns.

Of course, Tim could adopt `hands off' administation by doing any of
the following:
 - forwarding to /dev/null
 - using auto-bounce script
 - forwarding to tcmay@netcom.com, but ignoring all mail related to
   his remailer.

It might be a good idea to check that sameer thinks this is ok.  It's
bound to piss people off more than remailers with a more interactive
administrator.  It basically says that mail bombs and spams are
acceptable and requests are pointless.

			Rick

From: Greg Broiles <greg@ideath.goldenbear.com>

   In this model, who deals with mailbombs/spams/requests for address blocks?
   It is this sort of administrivia (plus the threat of liability) that
   makes running a remailer troublesome, not a lack of someone's $20/month.

This point is right on.

   I think it's disingenuous to say that "X pays the bills for the network
   link; X purchased the hardware and keeps it running; the box is in X's
   house/office; X is the person who reads complaint mail and responds (or
   fails to); but because Y sends X $20/month, the remailer (and attendant
   liability for its mis/use) belongs to Y."

The whole point of separation of operations and ownership is to
actually separate them.  If the computer/network service owner (X
above) is participating in any _semantically meaningful_ way in the
operation of the remailer service, then they too are part of the
remailer service.  If the computer/network service is responding to
complaint mail, or even getting properly directed complaint mail, they
are exposing themselves to participation in the remailing service.

As with liability for content, the important issue here is the state
of mind of the computer/network operator.  If they know sufficiently
many details about the nature of the remailer operation, the boundary
of separation is breached.  

Unfortunately, the standard mechanism of complaint on the internet is
the postmaster address.  Complainants do not always follow the nice
complaint instructions in the headers of email.  A remailer run out of
a shell account will have postmaster complaints addressed to the
computer/network operator rather than the remailer operator.

Therefore, a second postmaster address is required.  A second
postmaster address means another domain name.  This new domain name
can be either a subdomain or a brand new one.  I don't think it will
matter much, although a domain not related to the computer/network
operator would further the separation.

Now setting up new domain names, while pretty easy, requires the
cooperation of DNS operators.  Typically these connections have been
informal and a low barrier to entry but only if you know somebody who
does domain names.  DNS operation is not yet a separate service to
buy, but I suspect it will become so.  In the meanwhile the offers of
DNS provision by John and Strick are welcome.

   [...] I don't think that anyone - not courts,
   and not the world-in-general - is going to pay attention to that 
   formalism when it's clear that a machine essentially under the control
   of X is being used for 'antisocial' means.

As important as legal protections are, direct action against spammers
attacks the machine infrastructure directly.  A word to the wise
computer/network provider.

Eric

> Now setting up new domain names, while pretty easy, requires the
> cooperation of DNS operators.  Typically these connections have been
> informal and a low barrier to entry but only if you know somebody who
> does domain names.  DNS operation is not yet a separate service to
> buy, but I suspect it will become so.  In the meanwhile the offers of
> DNS provision by John and Strick are welcome.
> 

	I sell DNS service as well. See
http://www.c2.org/services/DNS_MX.html

-- 
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Network Administrator				Pager:	 510-321-1014
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