Re: The Crisis with Remailers

At 12:30 AM 5/22/96 EDT, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:

>	Would you suspect that having more warning labels (before & after,
>not just in the headers) would help with any negative reputation thus
>generated?

Probably not. Does it really matter how many times I tell you "I'm not being
a jerk" if everything I send you is in fact jerky? (FBI and "this is not an
assault", anyone?)

Pointing people at legitimate uses of anonymity, as various folks have
suggested, is undoubtedly a good idea. Would anyone care to suggest a few
newsgroups where the vast majority of anonymous posts have really good
reasons for being so?

In cases where there's been serious abuse of remailers that's been caught
and dealt with, some PR on the part of remailer operators might go a long
way toward helping things. "Yes, this person was doing loathsome things, but
we put a stop to it [insert details here."

>put into public view... I see no reason to give lawyers more of a privilege
>than religious/psychiatric individuals.

Ditto. Likewise, I liked the instance last year of a student applying for
the mail logs of the local (state?) government. It is Good for rulers to
feel the same weight of the rules they impose on others.

--
Bruce Baugh
bruce@aracnet.com
http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

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On Wed, 22 May 1996, Bruce Baugh wrote:

:Pointing people at legitimate uses of anonymity, as various folks have
:suggested, is undoubtedly a good idea. Would anyone care to suggest a few
:newsgroups where the vast majority of anonymous posts have really good
:reasons for being so?

On certain political newsgroups (perhaps most noticeably in the
soc.culture.* heirarchy) it's common to see someone's views refuted
because they are identified with a particular interest group.  The
"result" of the argument is suspect simply because it may be considered
favourable to the author's interest-group, the (sometimes rigourous)
argument /justification is pushed aside in the rush to malign another's
contention.  Anonymity serves as a barrier for some of these conjecturous
refutations (though there is a loss of credibility associated with an
anonymous post as well).  In certain other cases, someone may wish to keep
their employer ignorant of their political beliefs.  Then there are all
the cases where one wishes to keep sexual-orientation (or anything else
considered private), membership in an organization from others. There is
no doubt that anonymity is an extremely valuable position to occupy (and
an important option to keep open for everyone).  Of course we tend to hear
of the "bad" uses to which remailers are put.

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means the price went way up.

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