From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 08:47:38 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
Message-ID: <199710010039.TAA16972@einstein.ssz.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Forwarded message:

> From: Fisher Mark <FisherM@exch1.indy.tce.com>
> Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
> Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 11:49:29 -0500

> Jim Choate writes:

> >What would motivate an average consumer to use an anonymous remailer?

> >What besides raising hell anonymously, laundering money, and defeating
> >merchant purchase traffic analysis are commercial anonymous remailers
> good
> >for?

> Well, maybe the avenue to pursue isn't the average consumer, but the
> average employee.  I don't doubt that at least some companies are under
> email traffic analysis by their competitors (and/or their competitor's
> governments) to get a clue about future directions for their products.

Well, speaking from more than a couple of years in the business, most
companies don't take that sort of traffic outside their corporate firewalls.
I can state unequivicaly, working for Tivoli - IBM, that were an employee to
send such confidential email out they would get sacked ASAP (as they should
be) and possibly face criminal and/or civil charges. Besides, it's much
safer to just bribe somebody, that way some eager beaver doesn't stumble
over your tap in a routine maintenance tour.

> I could see where many (eventually most) companies would send email to
> each other using remailers, so that only the companies involved know
> that they communicated with each other.

So you are proposing something like:

  employee emial --> anonymous remailer --> firewall --> Internet

  Intenet --> firewall --> anonymous remailer --> employee2 email

Or,

  employee email --> firewall --> anonymous remailer --> firewall

  firewall --> employee2 email


To be honest, I can't see either one providing any sort of security that
would be advantagous to a business. Not only that but in the second case
the remailer is owned/operated by a third party. How do I know my
competitors aren't running remailers to capture my traffic? The first case
would be much simpler if we simply do away with the remailers and simply
send encrypted email using company distributed software and keys.
  
> Internet email doesn't provide
> the same level of privacy that snail mail, phones, and faxes do now.

You consider snail mail, phones, and faxes secure? You certainly live in a
different world than I do. I personaly consider none of them secure. Hell, I
have all the equipment I need to intercept any and all of these forms of
traffic in my workshop. For less than a thousand bucks you too can have the
necessary equipment.

> With the use of remailers, Internet email could provide more privacy
> than snail mail, phones, or faxes.

Only if we use encryption and/or remailer technology. This crypto technology
is applicable to the other technologies besides email. Otherwise they are all
about equivalent without it, they keep the honest man honest and thats about
it.


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