From: elee9sf@Menudo.UH.EDU
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 93 09:20:48 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: ANON: remail abuse
In-Reply-To: <9307212358.AA06651@yang.cpac.washington.edu>
Message-ID: <199307261618.AA29254@Menudo.UH.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> potentially useful and/or fun object can be put to extreme nastiness without
> much (or any) knowledge or imagination:  firearms, poisons

Perhaps the government should quit selling these items to third world
countries.

> Oh, big deal.  Payphone = 25c.  Junk mail = 29c for *first-class*
> harrassment mail.  :) Anonymous E-mail remailers = something much
> less, or free at the moment.
 
> Money is *not* the issue.  Period.

I think it is a large factor.  It boils down to control.  I could get
my own domain from UUNET and ship megs of junk mail, but I'm probably
not going to do that since I would PAY for it all.  You think your
email is "free" since the associated cost is hidden in your school
fees.

> The reason anonymous remailers are not the same as payphones or junk
> mail is that the latter two leave tangible clues behind.

Yeah, but the clues that a payphone call or junk mail leave are nearly
worthless.  I mean, I could do a "pot shot" attack on somebody, one
time only, and there is no way I could be tracked, unless I were
observed at the time.

Just curious, but what makes e-mail so different to you?  E-mail
reaches thousands of people all over the world, but so does postal
mail.  E-mail is usually quick, and so is a phone call.  Anonymous
mail is harder to trace to the sender; a phone call from a payphone is
harder to trace to the caller.

Is it the combination of these items?

These remailers are just experimental!

> opinion in *this* group, but. . . .)  Both payphones and mail leave tangible
> clues which can be investigated and traced by law enforcement authorities.

Sendmail activity is generally logged in the syslog file.  Anonymous
mailers make is more difficult to determine the true destination.

You would have to repeatedly use the same payphone or mailbox, to
leave tangible clues