From: "L. McCarthy" <lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu>
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 94 14:22:04 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: Making Terminal Remailers Foreign
In-Reply-To: <9411202104.AA21607@toad.com>
Message-ID: <199411202222.RAA12124@ducie.cs.umass.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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Gary Jeffers writes:
>    This scheme would insure that for that remailer, all mail
> deliveries would be foreign. If there were legal or political problems,
> then that remailer would be protected by its foreign jurisdiction.
> This safety would not be bulletproof, but it would greatly raise the
> cost of hassling the remailer. A cautious remailer operator might
> choose a remailer in a country with really bad diplomatic relations with
> his own host country.

Not _too_ awful or else the remailer might become a casualty of war. Barring 
Blitzkriegen, though, I suppose such problems can be forecast and dealt with 
as fairly minor inconveniences. Playing countries off against each other can 
be quite an effective strategy. The trick is finding countries which are 
a) fairly hostile to other countries, b) fairly permissive of free speech,
privacy etc., and c) reasonably net-connected.  Most countries would seem to 
fail at least one of these criteria w.r.t., say, the U.S.

I'm waiting to see how much headway the Church of Scientology makes against
anon.penet.fi. I've read some rather ominous comments in alt.privacy.anon-
server about their endeavors. Admittedly that case deals with a news article,
not email, but it is an example of attempted international intervention.

I suppose now someone will complain that the Scientologists are just getting
a bad rap....

- -L. McCarthy
Today's T-shirt-I-couldn't-safely-wear-in-many-countries:
"MY GOD IS BIGGER THAN YOUR GOD" (with accompanying illustration)

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