From: jrochkin@cs.oberlin.edu (Jonathan Rochkind)
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 94 22:47:59 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: usenet-to-mail
Message-ID: <aaf34f5a0602100483cd@[132.162.201.201]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


"Robert A. Hayden" <hayden@krypton.mankato.msus.edu> wrote:
>More importantly, are there are usenet-to-mail gateways?

My first impression was that that was just a joke. Then I thought it might
be a very good idea after all. Then I thought it surely wasn't a joke, but
also wasn't a very good idea. Now I'm not sure. :)

It seems like it might be a good idea. All the anon remailers could watch a
certain newsgroup, alt.remailer.submit perhaps, and take messages with a
"anon-remailer-attn: specific@remailer", and deal with them just like
normal mail input.

Would there by any benefit to doing this at all over the present system?
Why would someone submit a message to the remailer "bramble" via newsgroup
instead of just mailing it?  Unless you find an anonymous way to post to
the newsgroup in the first place, your security seems to be seriously
compromised. Even if everything is encrypted, you've made traffic analysis
a huge amount easier.  And if you are finding a way to post the a newsgroup
anonymously in the first place, odds are you have some other entry point to
the remailer bramble, so why make a stop on the newsgroup opening yourself
up to traffic analysis?

Now that I think about it, it seems that there isn't really any reason for
such a thing.