Cooperation

Hal:
   I agree that it is to our advantage to minimize the cooperation between
remailers, for the following reasons:
 
1)  The existance of a cabal dominating such a function admits the
posibility of the abuse of power, for whatever reason.
 
2)  The requirement of cooperation between remailers limits the size of the
remailer net to the number of operators that can effectively cooperate with
each other.  (Yes, we can extend via overlapping groups, but this
introduces chokepoints--another weakness.)
 
3)  The requirement of cooperation between remailers raises the cost (in
time and legal vulnerabilities) to enter the remailer net.
 
4)  Failing all of these, there is a real chance (happening even now) that
users will trust the operators too much.
 
 
But there is a major difference between active cooperation and agreeing to
a standard.  Active cooperation is just that--something which cannot be
automated, or which involves automated judgement decisions.  I claim that
my ideas are merely standards.  A standard which might even be extendable
into the dominions of a hostile government.
 
Nathan

Nathan Zook wrote:

> But there is a major difference between active cooperation and agreeing to
> a standard.  Active cooperation is just that--something which cannot be
> automated, or which involves automated judgement decisions.  I claim that
> my ideas are merely standards.  A standard which might even be extendable
> into the dominions of a hostile government.

Yes! Standards are not collusion. In fact, standards can lessen the
amount of ad hoc contact needed between remailer operators, and thus
reduce somewhat the prospects for compromise and collusion.

Robust standards are also helpful for building "hands-off" remailers,
in which remailer account owners take a hands-off approach, possibly
even to the point of creating the accounts and then never checking
again.

The proposals I've made, sometimes called a "Remailer's Guild," were
not for a cabal, but for a market standard that would tend to reward
those who follow certain standards and punish (all in a market sense)
those who flout standards just for the sake of being different.

(The real idea was to get some progress on deciding on some features
and terminology, to the point that a "Release" version could be
produced, like PGP 2.6, for example.)

It may be that such convergence on standards can be done without any
contact at all, just through market forces and things like pinging
scripts. The remailer analog of a self-healing network, rerouting
around brain-damaged sites.

--Tim May, posting at 3:55 a.m. because this is my jet lag rebound
period, in which I can't go to sleep because I slept for 11 hours upon
my arrival at home


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On Mon, 6 Feb 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

> Yes! Standards are not collusion. In fact, standards can lessen the
> amount of ad hoc contact needed between remailer operators, and thus
> reduce somewhat the prospects for compromise and collusion.

If someone adds the secure coin-flip exchange between chain neighbors to
my Dining Cryptographers IRC client, all remailer operators can go on IRC 
and anonymously discuss the standards so that no cabals can form ;)

-Thomas