Re: Remailer Attack (fwd)

Forwarded message:

> Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 19:17:11 -0700
> From: Tim May <tcmay@got.net>
> Subject: Re: Remailer Attack (fwd)

> > -  some sort of legal protection and recognition for the remailer
> >    operators
> 
> I believe remailers are strongly protected by the Electronic Communcations
> Privacy Act, which explicitly says that reconveyors or intermediary parties

[deleted description]

> This line of reasoning has not been used in any defense, perhaps because
> there have been no prosecutions of remailers. Whether the courts, including
> The Court, will conclude that the ECPA is protection, is of course unknown
> to me.

But that is the exact point I'm making - it hasn't been tested. Before
anyone with a lick of sense is going to jump into the remailer business
big-time somebody is going to have to put their neck on the block and set
the liability standard.

> > -  some mechanism for them to operate as a business entity with a
> >    clear profit.
> 
> And I mentioned this specifically.

I'll grant you mentioned digital postage. This simply is not robust enough
to handle the world of a commercial remailer operator. We'll just have to
agree to disagree here because the standard digital postage argument simply
doesn't sway me to support it.


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At 8:56 PM -0700 9/26/97, Jim Choate wrote:


>I'll grant you mentioned digital postage. This simply is not robust enough
>to handle the world of a commercial remailer operator. We'll just have to
>agree to disagree here because the standard digital postage argument simply
>doesn't sway me to support it.

That's OK, you don't have to.

And the person who earlier today said that remailers should _not_ be
commercialized, he doesn't have to support it either.

The point is that some remailers will remail for free. Some will remail for
some form of digital postage. Some will charge too little, some too much.
Some will adjust their prices based on market/customer reactions. And so on.

What _others_ think is not really too important.

It seems fairly obvious that some form of metered service--remailing for a
fee--is likely to evolve. Charityware remailers will work for a while, so
long as the usage is low and the expectations are even lower. But
eventually those with an actual need for anonymous communication will pay
for the service. How much, and when, and in what form, all this remains to
emerge.

I call this metered usage "digital postage" because that's what it is. It
has to be untraceable, obviously, and so some form of blinded cash, or
blinded token (e.g., "use once tokens") has to be used.

--Tim May

The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^1398269     | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."