From: "Geoffrey C. Grabow" <gcg@pb.net>
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 01:24:05 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: What about making re-mailers automatically chain?
Message-ID: <3.0b15.32.19960930085114.0068dec0@mail.pb.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/enriched

At 09:30 09/29/96 -0800, you wrote:
>At 4:14 AM -0500 9/29/96, David E. Smith wrote:
>
>>I dunno about that one.  Even if the message itself is encrypted,
>>every remailer has to have the address of the final recipient for
>>your plan to work.  And if you have cleartext for that message
>...
>
>Actually, as I read the original proposal, it was to only _insert_
>additional links. Thus, imagine the following remailer chain, with Alice
>sending to Zeke  through a chain, represented in parentheses (like LISP):
>
That's what I was going for.  The re-mailer would only add links if the recip that it sees is another mailer.  If it doesn't recognize the destination as a remailer, it must assume that it's the last link and should send the mail.  If that doesn't happen Dave's right.  Multiple mailers would know the final dest.  The question I was heading for on this is: 

Does this add anything useful?  

Removing knowledge of the path from the sender is a plus.  This prevents anyone, even the sender, from being able to give up any useful info even if under court order.  Adding "random" traffic is helpful 'cause many people (including myself) use pre-fab anon scripts and therefore use the same anon paths all the time (I should stop that).  This opens those messages up to some analysis and the possibility of the sender being revealed.

Granted, these are not major items.  The real question is:

Is this worth implementing?  As gbroiles@netbox.com said:

>All of this (adding remailer status tracking based on frequent updates of
>digitally signed information from a trusted third party) can be done, but
>it's a pain in the ass to code...




G.C.G.

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