From: tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)
Date: Wed, 22 May 1996 14:23:28 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The Twilight of the Remailers?
Message-ID: <adc79abe26021004b7e9@[205.199.118.202]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 7:59 PM 5/21/96, Alex Strasheim wrote:
>I'm closing my mixmaster, nsa@omaha.com, on the 4th of June.
>
>There wasn't an incident that triggered this, but Hal's post about the FBI
>sort of spooked me, as have the lawsuits.  I don't have a lot of assets
>myself, but I do have partners.  My lawyer tells me that there's no
>reliable way to separate my personal net activities from those of the
>company my parnters and I own, and that I could even be exposing my
>parnters to personal liability.
>
>I can't speak for anyone else, but for me the problem with running a
>remailer is that it's an inherently altruistic enterprise.  That in itself
>wouldn't be so bad, but the liability makes the extent of the altruism
>open ended.  If I knew that the worst case scenario would be $1k or even a
>$5k personal loss I could do it, but an open ended liability that's shared
>by my partners is unacceptable.
>
>I'm sorry for the inconvenience this will cause.

Between Hacktic going down, Hal's comments that he may shut down his two
sites, and this, plus others who are more quietly making plans to shut
down, I think the thread title "The Remailer Crisis" is more apt than ever.

As to potential liability, it is very likely to be vastly more than the
examples Alex cites, of $1K or "even a $5k personal loss." Lawyers don't
get out of bed in the morning for such insignificant sums.

Keith Henson has been a friend of mine for the past dozen years (and I
actually met him first in 1976), and he has kept me informed of his fight
with the CoS. He's being sued for $100,000 by the CoS. (And they asked him
a lot of questions about remailers, and who runs them. He didn't tell them
much.)

I can't say whether they are likely to win their suit, or what the judgment
might be. But make no mistake about it, if the CoS wins and Keith is
ordered to pay....

It's one reason I won't run a remailer that can ever be traced back to me.
(I also don't have a box on the Net and don't really trust running
remailers on machines someone else has root to. And I'm not a Unix person.
And....)

I figure that there are some, such as Detweiler, maybe government types,
maybe others, who would make efforts to "take me down." Posting some child
porn through my site to a Usenet group and then alerting the media would
pretty much do it. (Or if binaries are not allowed, posting solicitations.
Or if Usenet posting is not allowed...well, there are still ways...)

"The Twilight of the Remailers"?

Ironically, "copyright violation" and "clam secrets" were not even on the
list of "the Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse" that we thought would really
put remailers under some extreme pressure. If the Scienotologists can shut
down many of the remailers, imagine what the Horsemen will do!

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."