From: abostick@netcom.com (Alan Bostick)
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 94 18:12:40 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Changes to remailer@jpunix.com
In-Reply-To: <199411172235.QAA19976@jpunix.com>
Message-ID: <co-okyczBG$R073yn@netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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In article <199411172235.QAA19976@jpunix.com>,
"John A. Perry" <perry@jpunix.com> wrote:
> 
> In message <199411171606.AA18990@xtropia> you write:
> 
> >here are some other ideas to consider in addition to or instead of the
> >20k limit:
> > * impose a 20k limit on message unless they are received from a known
> >   remailer and sent to a known remailer.
> 
> Good in theory once again, but bad in practice. This would entice the
> abusers to jeopardize several remailers instead of just one. Every
> remailer that spam/proprietary-stuff goes through would be potentially at
> risk also. If remailers are going to be legally jeopardized, I would 
> think the impact would be less if it were one instead of many. But, there 
> is also safety in numbers. Hmm...

But (except for monitoring messages going into and out of the remailer,
or operator logging) how is anyone to know which remailers were involved
in a chain?  Isn't this one of the things that chaining is supposed to
prevent?  

A more accurate objection might be that if spam/proprietary data is
chained through remailers, then EVERY remailer is at risk.  

BTW, I think your safeguards (which I am _not_ objecting to) only make
it a little bit harder to use your remailer to post stolen code or
whatever.  Someone  could easily break the posts up into pieces and
chain them through your remailer, perhaps through different chains as
well, e.g.:

>::
>Anon-Subject: RC5.ZIP [06/37] {Sources for RSADSI's proprietary cipher}

You could block multiple messages with the same or similar subject
fields, but anyone chaining remailers intelligently would probably not
use a single remailer as the final sending point -- unless they had it
in for that remailer!

Or are you going to block posts from remailers that forward spam to you?
(A cure worse than the disease, IMHO).

                          | In the other room I passed by Ellen Leverenz as 
   Alan Bostick           | someone asked her "Do you know any monopole 
   abostick@netcom.com    | jokes?"
finger for PGP public key | "Sure," she said.   "In fact, I know two of them."
Key fingerprint:          |     -- Terry Carr, GILGAMESH
50 22 FB 46 41 A3 17 9D F7 33 FF E1 4E 1C 89 79  +legal_kludge=off

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