From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 22:25:14 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Anonymous Remailers at work
Message-ID: <199608070405.VAA19000@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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One of the big problems with remailers is getting them deployed widely.
How can we create a demand for the service that will encourage
people to both (a) deploy them and (b) think of them as good rather than bad?
Aside from cypherpunks, spammers, and everyone using anon.penet.fi, 
there aren't really a lot of people familiar with them.

I've recently run into a couple of business problems at work
that could be solved by (slightly modified) remailers.

1) Manager performance review, suggestion boxes, and questions to
visiting honchos - there are several departments that are using
"email to the secretary who'll take your name off and forward it"
to handle this problem.  Remailers are an obvious solution.
   (More obvious if we weren't using (gack, phfft!) Microsoft Mail :-)
It would probably be worth modifying the remailer to use a permit-list
as well as a block-list for destinations and maybe sources, 
so that companies don't get surprised by outside spammers,
and people can get used to using the things at work.
Distribute the thing as an OmbudsKit or whatever.
You'd obviously want the default to be non-logging.

2) Sending sensitive email across the real Internet - between
customers, and for those days that the departmental dialup
mail server or remote LAN access isn't working and you need to 
send something from home or on the road.  A standard remailer would
do the job, though you'd probably want to add a permit-list,
and you might want to add logging and/or return receipts.
Mail to pgprelay@foobar.com and it distributes it....
(Requires putting a key somewhere well-known, like in DNS
or on the key servers.)

(Hmmm - an alternative implementation is to use a CGI script
to do the mailing and use SSL; some companies may find
this easier to deploy, depending on their firewall 
configurations.)

(Does it make sense to deploy something like this as a 
standard feature of an IPSP gateway system like John's?)

Any other reasons to install anonymous remailers at work,
and things you'd do to make them more attractive or
less scary to corporate network administrative types?

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	Defuse Authority!