From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 9 Jun 1997 03:52:10 +0800
To: ichudov@Algebra.COM (Igor Chudov @ home)
Subject: Re: Who subscribes to the list?
In-Reply-To: <199706070142.DAA29774@basement.replay.com>
Message-ID: <3.0.1.32.19970608123101.02f91bcc@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 08:49 PM 6/6/97 -0500, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
>What do remailer operators think about requiring all incoming messages
>to be encrypted?  Would that bring more good than harm?

For security, you need encryption.  There's really no question about it,
and a non-encrypted remailer chain is a joke.

For convenience, you'd rather not need user-visible encryption,
but SSL lets you do an encrypted web interface without the user
needing to do any work.  The catch is that it becomes much harder
to do chained encryption - if the cgi remailer program does it,
the connections from the web remailer through the chain are secure,
but the user still needs to trust the web-remailer.

You may not _want_ too much convenience, to discourage spammers,
but you may be willing to tolerate a joke level of security
as long as the joke is good enough and enjoyed by enough people....

On the balance, I'd say encrypt.

#			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 or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)