From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com
Date: Mon, 23 Jan 95 14:46:15 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  transient guerrilla remailers
Message-ID: <9501232242.AA19112@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Nobody@rahul.net, forwarding from homer's remailer, writes:
> If c2.org can offer RIAB accounts on a pre-paid basis, what's to
> stop people interested in the cause from paying anonymously,
> setting up the RIAB, and just walking away? When the pre-paid period
> expires, the remailer goes away. 

Yeah - John Doe pays in cash, or uses a Post Office money order :-),
to get X months of remailer service.  After the initial account setup,
he can keep it up dated by mailing in mostly-anonymous paper cash using
the usually-anonymous paper remailer service offered by the US government,
dropping the payments in a mailbox.  If the sysadm is trustable, no problem,
and the degree of trust is whatever a month's remailer service costs.
If he's not, John Doe can detect it by occasionally using the remailer,
and can spam the net with scanned-in copies of the money order showing
it's payable to sysadm.  If the sysadm wants to float the (low) cost of
running a remailer for a month, he can even keep the money order around
for a month or so to use as evidence if he's subpoenaed or otherwise legally
harassed.

One concern I have about this remailer strategy is whether everyone's
remailer shows up as their own, or as "nobody" - can you tell 
the nobodies apart?
		
			John X. Doe