From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 10:46:49 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Why? (fwd)
Message-ID: <199710010249.VAA17613@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 22:19:09 -0400
> From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
> Subject: Why?

> Jim Choate wrote:

> >> so, and not just for cpunk traffic.  We should use them for
> >> everything.  It won't take that many people to reduce the message
> >> 
> >> The tools exist to do this.
> >
> >Yes, but why would I?

> - From "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera
> Part 4, Section 2:
> 
>     It was a program about Czech emigration, a montage of private
>   conversations recorded with the latest bugging devices by a Czech spy
>   who had infiltrated the emigre community and then returned in great
>   glory to Prague.  It was insignificant prattle dotted with some harsh

And your premise is what?

 -  Anonymous remailers would have resolved the Czech issue?

 -  America is currently in the same sort of situation and the use of
    remailers would resolve it?

 -  Anonymous remailers guarantee that such things won't happen in the
    future?

 -  Santyana was right?

Obviously the first two are gibberish. There is absolutely nothing to have
prevented the Czech government (or any other) from setting up anonymous
remailers acting in the role of man-in-the-middle attacks subverting any
conspiracies.

Now the 3rd is clearly unrealistic because the issue is the respect one
human being gives another in regards to their beliefs and the expression
thereof. The problem is a people problem, not technology.

I personaly vote for the 4th option myself. I would like to believe that
through the use of commercial anonymous remailers the concept of anonymity
could become ingrained in a society. That is what would help resolve issues
like the above, not the remailers themselves.

My original question still stands, why would I or any other party choose to
use an anonymous remailer for anything other than the original 3 items I
mentioned previously.


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