From: Philippe Nave <pdn@msmail.dr.att.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Jul 94 13:01:05 PDT
To: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: RE: Remailers
Message-ID: <2E380E4C@mspost.dr.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>
> Philippe Nave writes:
>
> > I think the single most important thing we could do for remailer 
operators
> > would be to figure out how to make the remailers *truly* *anonymous*. 
That
> > is, we need a net.hack of some sort that allows remailers to send their
> > messages in a way that leaves no trace whatsoever of the original poster
> > *and* leaves no trace of the remailer itself.
>
> Er, if we knew how to do that, we wouldn't need remailers. :)
>

Touche!

This is, of course, correct. In an ideal scenario, everyone would be able
to personally establish anonymity for their own communications and the
concept of 'anonymous remailers' would be moot.

In the meantime, I suggest that it would be worth quite a bit of effort
on the part of a few wizards to get a 'truly' anonymous remailer up and
running for the benefit of the masses. I keep seeing messages to the effect
of 'sorry, you can't get there from here', but that just tells me that the
problem is non-trivial. [Note that I'm not pooh-poohing the considered
opinions of people who know quite a bit more about email and the Net than
myself; I simply remain stubbornly optimistic about the capabilities of a
large group of skilled Internauts.] Also, don't misconstrue my ravings
to be an indictment of remailers as they exist today - I see that many
valuable lessons are being learned about interoperability, reliability,
and real-world exposure to problem situations. Even our beloved LD has
helped in that regard, bless his pointed head, by showing us what a single
deranged loon can do to a network of remailers. I simply maintain that now
is a good time to reopen the study of 'true' anonymity so that further
remailer developments are added to a strong foundation.

ObEcash: Peons like me who are not capable of the bizarre hacks required
for 'true' anonymity would most likely embrace ecash payment systems for
remailing service with enthusiasm.

Having demonstrated my ignorance of low-level email transport techniques,
I now retire to the shadows again........     :)

    Philippe