1997-10-02 - Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)

Header Data

From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Message Hash: d4b9c515d73d0cfbb852a00e7f15c56c023efc9816f0de4b39f7723cd8bd8547
Message ID: <199710020003.TAA22891@einstein.ssz.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1997-10-02 00:05:01 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 08:05:01 +0800

Raw message

From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 08:05:01 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
Message-ID: <199710020003.TAA22891@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 18:27:10 -0400
> From: ghio@temp0122.myriad.ml.org (Matthew Ghio)
> Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)

> Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> > What besides raising hell anonymously, laundering money, and defeating
> > merchant purchase traffic analysis are commercial anonymous remailers good
> > for?
> 
> So what are remailers being used for?

We are talking commercial remailers here right? <see the quote you used
above>. As famous as you are, you don't get to change the rules in the
middle of the game.

>  1) Private communication in the form of anonymous message pools

You don't need anonymous remailers for this since simple crypto will provide
just as good private communications security than anonymous remailers will
because there is no central choke point where traffic analysis occurs . Now
if one of the parties is actualy under surveillance then the anonymous
remailers won't help because they will be tapping at the source, if anything
it would provide further evidence of the parties complicity in a conspiracy.
If you want your communications to stay private (if I understand your use of
the word) use encryption and use underground remailers which isn't open to
commercial exploitation, or else simply purchase a different account on your
current ISP.

>  2) Test posts

Irrelevant, people don't pay for test posts enough to keep a commercial
remailer in business - unless we vastly increase the total traffic level by
quite a few orders of magnitude. 

>  3) Discussion of Macintosh computers

irrelevant, people won't pay for this either.

>  4) Discussion of obscure religions

irrelevant (and I'm a Pantheist, they don't get more obscure than that)
since people ain't gonna pay for this unless they are persecuted in their
country of residence. If so the easiest thing to do would be to outlaw
anonymous remailers (with the same logic they use to oppress the religion).
[see #6 for more details on this]

>  5) Sharing erotic fantasy stories

And you suspect they will actualy pay for this? This line of reasoning I
would love to hear more on...

>  6) Avoiding censorship in Singapore

Let's look at this a moment. I believe we can take as a given that Singapore
is a oppressive regime. Furthermore all traffic in Singapore goes through
government operated and regulated POP's. In that environment you really want
to send traffic to an anonymous remailer? Can you say 'man-in-the-middle',
and not only that but all the outgoing traffic from Singapore won't be
through an anonymous remailers making it trivial for Singapore officials to
determine exactly who to go hassle. So it is clear that the only parties
discussing Singapore safely will be outside Singapore which makes the
supposition that Singapore is going to come after you a bit suspect.
You're talking about a country that outlaws private satellite dishes - get
real. Furthermore commercial enterprises are open to much closer scrutiny in
areas like Singapore making it even harder to stay in business unless the
operator happens to be a government stooly, hardly the stuff of security.

My thesis would be that any remailer (commercial or not) in a country with
an oppresive regime is the last place you want to consider secure.

>  7) Avoiding censorship in Iran

See #6. Applies to China, Korea, Iraq, etc.

>  8) Discussion of remailers themselves

I would also like to see your explanation of exactly why they would pay for
this.

>  9) Discussion of controvertial political topics (racism, guns, drugs)

The only reason that anonymous remailers are useful here is that the
originating party doesn't want to deal with the results of being known.
The flip side to this is that the reputation of anonymous discussions in
these sorts of areas would have little political impact. A person who won't
discuss such issues under their own name certainly won't go out and become
actively involved in some political movement. Now if your claim is that such
activity might hold some weight with an elected official I would appreciate
an explanation as well - especialy considering that the anonymity provides
just enough 'cover' so that the politician can safely ignore any and all
traffic made through this mechanism, "They aren't one of my constituents."
If you have some reasoning outside this please share it.

> 10) Discussion about a TV show

Irrelevant because people won't pay for this.

Free remailers are useful for all sorts of mental masturbation, for actual
business there doesn't seem to be a lot of uses.


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