From: Rich Graves <rcgraves@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 12:27:13 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Blocking addresses by default
Message-ID: <199611072025.PAA22083@spirit.hks.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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Mark M. wrote:
> 
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> 
> With remailer abuse becoming more popular and remailers going down
> because of complaints, there seems to be some interest in remailer
> software that will block all email by default and will only pass
> along email that is explicitly unblocked.

I think this threatens serious security problems for the remailer 
network in two ways:

1. You'd create a list of people interested in anonymous information,
   which could potentially be obtained by police or other armed thugs.

2. The traffic would go down so substantially that traffic analysis     
   would be trivial.

As a counterproposal, I'd like to see better disclaimers on remailed 
messages. The reason the people complaining are so pissed off is that 
the blocklists are neither advertised nor automated enough. I'd like to 
see disclaimers and block list instructions at the top of the body of 
every single message. This would be encapsulated in some mark characters 
so that it could easily be removed by remailer chains. E.g.,

 To: remailer@erehwon.com

 Request-Remailing-To: remailer@nowhere.com

 [message]

remailer@erehwon.com prepends the following to the message before it is 
sent along:

 $$
 This message was sent through the anonymous remailer network. Neither
 the operator of this remailer, remailer-op@erewhon.com, nor the
 postmaster at this site has any way of determining the source or
 filtering the content of remailer messages. No logs are kept. If you
 do not wish to receive such anonymous messages from any link in the
 remailer network, send an email message to remailer-operators@c2.net
 with subject line "block." For more information on the remailer
 network, see [Raph's list] or send email to help@[?].
 $$

remailer@nowhere.com looks for "$$" as the first line of the message, 
and strips everything up to the next occurrence of "$$". It then appends 
its own disclaimer block before sending the message to the hop (remailer 
or final destination).

A bit annoying, yes, but I think this would go a long way towards 
improving public relations. I don't see how it compromises security.

What's wrong with this scheme? Other than the fact that all remailers 
would have to change their software at the exact same moment. :-)

[By the way, someone told me that the Chardos remailer doesn't include 
Complain-To or block-list instructions anywhere, not even in X-Headers.
Is this true? I think that would be bad. [tm]]

- -rich
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