From: stewarts@ix.netcom.com
Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 16:35:56 -0800 (PST)
To: Andy Dustman <andy@CCMSD.chem.uga.edu>
Subject: Re: mail-to-news fun
In-Reply-To: <19970205054436.4083.qmail@anon.lcs.mit.edu>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970205163534.00612d98@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>> Well, I'd really rather not do that.  I already have to deal with
>> abuse from nym.alias.net and mix@anon.lcs.mit.edu users.  

>All that being said, it might not be worth the effort to allow posting,
>since you're not actually doing the posting anyway. I've thought about 
>allowing posting again with a very restrictive newsgroup list 
>(only alt.anonymous.messages).

If I were going to restart a remailer, and to offer news posting,
I'd probably limit it to posting to moderated newsgroups only,
so a human can trash things that look like SPAM or abuse;
the abuse that caused me to kill my remailer wasn't something
a simple filter would catch.  (I'd also prefix each posting with a 
header about this message having been received from an anonymous source,
not verified, not guaranteed to be worth the electrons it's printed on,
probably not written by anybody whose name's at the bottom, etc....
People don't read mail headers or disclaimers at the bottom,
and putting disclaimers like that into message text for
email exposes the message to traffic analysis.)

Alt.anonymous.messages is an interesting alternative, but one of the 
ideals of posting news from a remailer is to allow people to 
broadcast politically incorrect speech anonymously, avoiding censorship
and retribution as much as possible.  This means letting people
call Lee Kwan Yew a fascist, complain that OJ's a space alien,
identify the person Hillary paid to off Vince Foster,
or proclaim that Hubbard's Ahmaddiyya Witnesses are the One True 
Religion -- Or post the One Page RSA+RC4 to the China newsgroups.

On the other hand, I don't want to support postings titled
"ALL FAGS MUST DIE" with a forged signature and email at the bottom,
and I especially don't want to post that from my remailer without
indicating that anything posted by a remailer might be forged.
That's why I shut down my previous remailer - the forger only
posted one forged message; the person whose name got forged
got flamed severely by dozens of people who objected to "her" posts.
Blocking the gay newsgroups cuts down on that kind of trolling,
but also cuts out the "Help, I might be gay and my parents will kill me"
traffic that remailers are supposed to help with.

On several other hands, though, even if you limit news posting,
trolls can abuse a remailer by sending email to large mailing lists.
It'd certainly never happen to Cypherpunks :-), but some other
mailing lists might attract trolls, and it's not easy to
identify them in advance (though I suppose adding a disclaimer
and cutmarks any time you post to something other than a 
known remailer is a partial solution.)


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#     (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)