From: edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank)
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 00:54:12 PST
To: Cypherpunks          <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: remailer signature suppression
Message-ID: <N3kewB6w165w@spectrx.saigon.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Marc Horowitz wrote on Dec 23:
 
    I think that signatures should be kept.  If you really want to be
    anonymous, you have bigger things to worry about than your sig
    showing up or not.
 
I don't follow Marc's logic here. If the wrong sig shows up, it
obviously negates all other precautions taken in using remailers, etc.
 
    And if I want to build a pseudonymous identity for myself, I might
    want to have a sig for that identity.  I wouldn't want the
    remailers stripping that out.
 
The problem is if you want to send a mixture of anonymous and
regular mail. This involves changing the "sig" on the fly; difficult
to do reliably with an automatic script. With loss of anonymity the
consequence of the wrong sig appearing with either anonymous or non-
anonymous messages.
 
    Perhaps it would make sense to have a header field which indicated
    if the sig should be kept or not.
 
This might be a good compromise.  Of course I would prefer the
signature-screen: Yes to be the default.  Also don't forget that
for those of us who can't specify net-headers at will this new
header would also have to be specifiable within text via the ::
convention or otherwise.

--
edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank)
SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005  Silicon Valley, Ca