- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Memo From... (1 of 7)
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(Part 1 of 7) The latest spin document on resistance to tyranny from The People's Democratic Republic of Washington requires some translation to be understood by normal human beings: > State of Washington > Washington State Patrol > General Administration Building > P.O. Box 42600 > Olympia, Washington 98504-2600 > (360) 753-6540 > > ... > >FROM: Representative Karen Schmidt, Chairman [sic] > Organized Crime Advisory Board > >SUBJECT: Paper Terrorism A contradiction in terms if there ever was one. "paper terrorism," to be a meaningful term, would have to be something like the dropping of 500 lb. bundles of paper on unsuspecting, innocent people. "Terrorism" means violent attacks on the populace to instill fear and uncertainty. Unless someone is killing people with paper, the subject of this document is pure propaganda. > It has been brought to my attention that anti- > government organizations have been utilizing a tactic > called "paper terrorism" to effectively disable government. It is interesting that "they" can only think in terms of "organizations." It may not dawn on them until it is too late that the future is one of individual action. No meetings to spy on. No informants. No membership lists or memos to seize. "Called?" Called by whom? By government? Notice that this is an example of the definition of a new term to suit those attempting to suppress opposition. It is a standard tactic. Note that there seems to be a key admission in the previous sentence. She seems to be saying that the tactics she is about to describe actually work. > Commonly, public officials are personally targeted. See various works on the history of the American Revolution for perspective. > This widespread practice is accomplished by overburdening > our communications, business, or judicial systems with > frivolous or repetitive petitions, property liens, and > small claims court actions. I thought that those frivolous systems of the government were already overburdened by "normal" business. So now thay wish to suppress those whose politics they don't like by classifying their communications, business, court petitions, liens and small claims actions as not only frivolous, but "terrorism." Interesting. >Enclosed is a brief explanation of this process. If you feel you >are a victim of "paper terrorism," I encourage you to contact the >Washington State Patrol, Organized Crime Intelligence Unit, in >Olympia at (360) 753-3277, for assistance. Note that "Intelligence" in law enforcement means keeping files and lists of names. It means prejudicing victims in subsequent actions and proceedings. It means targeting victims for their efforts at 1st Amendment expression and defending themselves in administrative and judicial proceedings. (continued in Part 2)

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Re: Digital Postage (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 21:03:59 -0400 > From: Anonymous <anon(a)anon.efga.org> > Subject: Re: Digital Postage (fwd) > Jim Choate wrote: > >> No, there is only one system which provides anonymity. It's called ecash. > >> The other systems do not have the features we want. > > > >Yes, but it does not have a clear market advantage. In fact the > >anonymity issue may actualy work against it. > > We are not talking about an abstract "what will the market do" issue > here. We are talking about how to get a working payment system up for > remailers which gets us great service and provides privacy and > security. That is exactly what we are talking about, he who predicts what the market will do AND invests somebodies elses money will win big. That 'abstract' market motion is EXACTLY what the market will do in practice. In other words it's the service you will be buying because the people with the money think it will make them money off your willingness to spend your money. As I have said before, privacy and security are not issues in remailers. Being able to plausibly deny any involvement is, a subtle but important difference. > The rest of the world may or may not catch on to ecash, but if it's > going to start, it will start with a small group. I think it should > be this one. It will not start with a small group. Anonymous remailers are big traffic - big buck operations in the long run. The price per message must be in the milli-cent range which means the traffic must be in the mega-message range to make money; simple multiplication. > Businesses use multiple forms of payment all the time, even in the > United States where multiple currency use is legally discouraged. It isn't a question of which currency you use - that is NOT the same as the economic system in place. Businesses may use dollars or dinars but at the end of the day they put them in a bank which at least at times follows international agreements on banking. This is why we can transfer money from one denomination to another. > When I go to a restaurant I can pay in cash or use a variety of credit > cards. And credit cards cost the establishment a substantial amount > of money and headache, too. Yes, but that is not a different system. You are still taking money from your bank account (on loan from a bank if through a CC) and putting it in somebody elses bank account. The banks define our system of economics to a great degree. Banks don't like anonymous transactions so whatever system we put in place must buy the support of the traditional financial institutions at some point. How do you convince a bank that anonymous cash transactions are in their best interest? > I hope we are all assuming that The Enemy knows who is using > remailers, at least at the moment. If they do then the users aren't anonymous anymore and hence any 'security' or 'privacy' they may derive is one of delusion. > There's no hiding those telltale > PGP messages sent to a certain short list of suspected remailer > addresses. Some day we will have good steganography and it won't be > possible to tell who is using a remailer, but this is not the best > problem to solve right now. Stego won't be any harder to detect than a PGP encrypted message. > >Can do what? Anonymity cracking or create a payment system that > >allows for the intermediate parties to be paid but doesn't > >over-burden the user? The point is not to have the poor end user have > >to create a half- dozen payment arrangements to get chaining. It > >becomes a real hassle to do at that point. > > No it doesn't. Watch carefully: > > $remailer{'cyber'} = '<alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net> alpha pgp'; > $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; > $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; > $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek money25cents"; > $remailer{"winsock"} = "<winsock(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> cpunk pgp pgponly hash cut ksub reord ?"; > $remailer{'nym'} = '<config(a)nym.alias.net> newnym pgp'; > $remailer{"squirrel"} = "<mix(a)squirrel.owl.de> cpunk mix pgp pgponly hash latent cut ek"; > $remailer{'weasel'} = '<config(a)weasel.owl.de> newnym pgp'; > $remailer{"reno"} = "<middleman(a)cyberpass.net> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek reord ?"; > $remailer{"cracker"} = "<remailer(a)anon.efga.org> cpunk mix remix pgp hash ksub esub latent cut ek money25cents reord post"; > $remailer{'redneck'} = '<config(a)anon.efga.org> newnym pgp'; > $remailer{"bureau42"} = "<remailer(a)bureau42.ml.org> cpunk mix pgp ksub hash latent cut ek"; > $remailer{"neva"} = "<remailer(a)neva.org> cpunk pgp pgponly hash cut ksub ?"; > $remailer{"lcs"} = "<mix(a)anon.lcs.mit.edu> mix money25cents"; > $remailer{"medusa"} = "<medusa(a)weasel.owl.de> money25cents mix middle" > $remailer{"McCain"} = "<mccain(a)notatla.demon.co.uk> mix middle"; > $remailer{"valdeez"} = "<valdeez(a)juno.com> cpunk pgp pgponly hash ek"; > $remailer{"arrid"} = "<arrid(a)juno.com> cpunk pgp pgponly money25cents hash ek"; > $remailer{"hera"} = "<goddesshera(a)juno.com> cpunk pgp pgponly hash ek"; > $remailer{"htuttle"} = "<h_tuttle(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> cpunk pgp hash latent cut post ek"; I guarantee that neither your mother or mine will look twice at that gobbeldy-gook. Hell, I won't use it because I have to create such files every damn time I have to send a message. Too much work, too much room for errors. When you can arrange to chain remailers without the user having to touch the above you will have a winner. KISS > See if you can figure out which remailers accept money and how much > they accept. Now, in figuring that out, did you do anything that > would reveal your identity? Do you think a simple program could > handle the task? Actualy, yes I did do something to reveal my identity. I have to pass that entire list of chaining along to the first remailer who passes it along to the second minus the first entry and so on. If I can grab a single remailer in that chain I can back track because that remailer knows where that list came from. To really make chaining secure neither the user or the individual operators should have a say in it. > You might be. I'm interested in smart people who want to protect > their privacy. Then they won't use remailers at all. A smart person is not going to trust any 3rd party channel they don't have total control over. A smart person is not going to get involved in a conflict in the first place. The situation is sort of like the comparison between reasonable and un-reasonable men. Progress is caused by the un-reasonable man. If the commercial remailer is ever going to arise (which I doubt) it will be one of 'regular joe's' as users and must be about as complicated as getting a coke from a machine (which is a long way off currently). > >This is the silliest thing I think I have heard so far in this > >discussion.... > >...And my experience is that prices move up and people expect them to. > > Mind your manners. I am, that doesn't mean I can't call a spade a spade. I didn't say anything about you personaly, deal with it. > Then look around. For the last few hundred years just about > everything has been dropping in price. Really? I suggest you look at newspapers from say the mid-60's and compare them to now. Very few things will be anywhere close to where it was then in price, and the vast majority will not be lower. Bread went up, water went up, electricity went up, etc. > And, in the computer and > information industry in particular, prices drop like crazy all the > time for decades, even when you adjust for inflation. Buy memory > recently? No, prices don't drop the machines that used to cost the current price aren't made anymore. Any entry level machine costs about $1,000 just like it did 10 years ago. The difference is that you get a lot more hardware and a new os. Again, a minor but important distinction. Yes, I have bought memory recently - 64M as a matter of fact. The memory has dropped in price because the new machines don't take it anymore or else the motherboards with the new many-megs-required OS's won't work on 8M anymore. Theres no mystery other than obsolescence at play. Try buying one of the new 4G DRAM's.... > If you want to run a remailer and charge a fraction of a cent for each > message, or for an account, or whatever, please be my guest. I looked into it for several months about a year and a half ago. The result was the current economic, social, and legal environment simply aren't going to support such operations in the near future with anything like the indipendance that we would like. Hell, your the one offering $50 or somesuch for a commercial remailer. Take that $50 and set up your own site. Nothing like experience to teach a hard lesson. If you're right you should be making money in short order. > >The key to anonyous remailers is not the cost per message but rather > >the amount of traffic to be carried. Anonymous remailers are beasts > >of mass markets measured in millions of recipients. > > That is obviously untrue. Remailers are used by a small highly > specialized market of perhaps a few hundred people. Some day, if we > do good work, there will be millions of users. While remailers may be, commercial remailers still don't exist and are a completely different beast than some philanthropic enterprise. If you don't get the millions up front you won't be getting anyone. The other aspect you seem to ignore consistently is not the cost to submit the original message but the cost to send that message to the world, the real cost I might add. The purpose of commercial remailers (and I suspect all remailers) is to reach a mass market. If your market can't reach millions for pennies nobody will use it because you can't give them what they want. Whether its drugs, sex information, or political views the central party must reach a large group to succeed. > Can you think of any mass market which started out as a mass market? > I can't think of a single one. Once the pioneers worked out the technology: Cable television, music videos, automobiles, air transport, bicycles, telephones. > >But the system to post charges BETWEEN remailers must be pretty > >consistent to be acceptable. > > Untrue. You just have to know what each remailer charges. That's > about as hard as knowing what services it offers or that it exists. Only if you feel obliged to arrange payment between the remailers yourself, which provides a link between remailers and you further eroding your expectation of anonymity. The point, which you miss, is that the chaining remailers should know nothing of the original user which your system fails to do. > >That is the key and it has NOT been discussed too any great > >degree. That inter-remailer traffic must be anonymous also or else > >traffic analysis can back-track. > > I may be misreading this, but you do realize ecash is anonymous, > right? Nobody can tell who sent the money, just who received it. ecash is anonymous but it is not an accepted standard between remailers, let along commercial ones. Furthermore, under your system I as a user must contact each remailer and arrange payment to some account. So we know not only who received it but who sent it as well, otherwise how does the remailer know to take your payment and apply it to your account and not mine?. If we further accept your premise that mallet knows who is using those remailers then we are completely devoid of anonymity. > Perhaps you are arguing that The Enemy would notice that you withdrew > a bunch of coins and then make a guess that all those remailers making > deposits three minutes later are depositing your coins? That is > easily solved by generating the ASCII ecash certificates once a week > or so and then pasting them into your messages when you send them. I am arguing that under the current system the checks and balances are such that true anonymity can't be attained on a scale that is commercialy feasible. > >It seems to me that the remailers need some sort of anonymous payment > >server that is put in place for some other reason, that way they > >don't have to deal with the justification issue. > > What justification issue? Ecash is available right now. You don't > have to justify it to anybody, just use it. Really? How about explaining how I purchase a car or house anonymously with ecash? I can't. Also, you seem to have missed an important point. When we get a system where anon remailers can survive we will have created an anonymous money laundry, not something that a lot of people want or desire. > Hopefully, once the cypherpunks start using it regularly, it will > begin to catch on with people peripheral to the group, and then with > everyone. If this were true it would have already happend. The thousand or so people on this list might be involved in the technology and its application, I doubt that we will have any say in its eventual success. > >> You are confusing one cost of doing business with the price the market > >> will bear. > > > >How? > > You seem to think that because the cost of transporting mail is > inexpensive, the price for protecting somebody's identity can't be > high. First, you don't know what I think - ask questions don't make assumptions (speaking of manners). Please keep your ad hominims at home. What I am saying is that because the cost of individual mail is low I as a commercial business trying to make a living off each of those emails can't expect a lot from them, therefore I need a lot of them. > >What I am saying is that physical mail and the system developed for > >dealing with it went hand-in-hand. The design and advancement of the > >Internet technology is not driven by email or it's technology. That > >perhaps because of this difference perhaps we need to look at models > >other than the postage one. It in fact may be coloring our perception > >and a look at alternative models might help. > > The only models that have been proposed so far require a lot of work > and evangelism. Ecash doesn't require much work, and it will be > easier to evangelize. ecash is not what I am talking about here. Which by the way will take a lot of work to get people to use it as ubiquitously as needed by a commercial remailer. I am talking about the entire infrastructure that will be required to support commercial remailers. What will be required is not clear to anyone involved in the issues. I furthermore don't have any interest in religion (re evangalism) but rather in running a business and making money. I don't want to change your mind, I want you to spend your money with me (as an anon remailer operator) with the security that no matter what you submit it can't be traced back to you. Even your much vaunted ecash can't do that yet. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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InfoWar 23 (Part III of 'The True Story of the InterNet')
by Bubba Sho'nuff 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 00:43:20 -0400 > From: "Robert A. Costner" <pooh(a)efga.org> > Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash > The first answer I got was so that remailer reliability could increase. > The theory as I understood it was that remailers were run like a hobby, not > a business, so the money would be an incentive to bring in professionalism. > So I proposed, and documented, that the minimum level to achieve this > would be a $50K investment over a year's time. This is in fact, more or > less what the Cracker remailer takes to run. Most of the resources are > donated in some way, but this is their equivalent retail value. Even so, > with Monty's pricing structure and Cracker's current level of traffic it > would be enormously profitable. I have to disagree on the annual cost to run. Considering the load of remailers a simple ISDN would be sufficient. With that instead of a T1 it takes less than $1,000 a month to operate a machine full-time. Approximately 1/4 of your estimate. I agree further that remailers COULD make a profit under current conditions IF the financial institutions accepted anonymous transactions (let's not even get into the LEA's and tax agents) from both source and destination; they don't. I personaly found the legal issues the most daunting considering my income and cash reserves. It would not take more than one or two nuisance suites to put a small operator out of the game permanantly. One of the critical aspects of successful small business operation is a stable financial environment, I don't think you can have that visiting the lawyer every few weeks. > In my opinion, and I've been known to be wrong, this is a seriously messed > up comment. A quarter per message is too much, much less a quarter per > hop. A price of 1/100 of a penny per message is closer to a proper > valuation. This is larger than my guess at a fair market per msg value. Considering your price does your remailer get enough traffic to pay your $50k a year? > But the problem here is in the pricing model. It should not be > transactional unless to encourage the very casual user. A pricing model > should be flat rate. One price for a month, or even a year's service. Of coure it should be transactional and the only way to get it going full speed is to grab the casual user. Consider that an email is a transaction, it isn't like a phone line that may actualy handle many users over a given time. Email has one source and one to many destinations. The problem with flat rate is it underestimates the impact of large remailings when the population is itself millions. Furthermore, under a flat rate model each remailer in the chain gets less if the number of remailers grows. This runs contrary to what the user wants for anonymity retention which is a lot of links in the chain. The user should be the one to decide how many and how much that is worth to them. > The > net is based on a peering price structure, not an inter-lata structure. > Trying to compute or add charges at each hop is against the nature of > information flow for the net. It sounds to me like what you are saying is that since email (a one-time event) is a service of the Internet, however the Internet (a long-term structure of computers forming backbones with more transient leaf nodes) can survive flat rate pricing because the limitations of a piece of hardware are known and can be figured in. The number of users and the amount of remailing can't necessarily be known before hand. Furthermore, assuming a commercial model I would certainly have saturating my pipes a goal. > There is some truth in this statement. But there are also remailers run by > a variety of companies such as hotmail, juno, and the like. They encompass > millions of users. Millions of users who want a remailer, but will not > tolerate the level of entry required for a Type-I or Mixmaster remailer. > Until client software can be improved and made as easy to use as an > integrated spelling checker, the "advanced" remailers will have no true > market share. (Oh, I forgot. Most of the world uses email clients without > integrated spell checkers.) It further seems to me that to make that software simple and easy to use a lot of 'decisions' have to be made for me. That indicates to me some sort of standards and the implied organizations that set them for the remailers. And contrary to what some would have you believe, those organizations and standards do not necessarily imply great submissions on the part of the participants indipendance. Consider the types of questions that needed to be answered to get the CDR up and going. Such an organization would probably suffice for the initial boot-strap. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: Memo From...(7 of 7)
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(Part 7 of 7) > The isolation works to reinforce their views, which in > turn gives them new purpose. Translation: "We think we have a really, really clever protoargument here for nullifying the right to peaceably assemble. If we can characterize the resisters as nut cases we can make the argument that they cannot be allowed the right to assemble because they reinforce each other's illness. Isn't that neat-o?" >This new purpose may take ordinary ideas to extremes, rationalize >their problems into blaming government, and cause members to >compete with each other to make stronger statements. Translation: "Just as happened in the 1770's. We can't have anything like THAT happening here and now, can we? That was THEN, this is NOW! SHUT UP and SIT DOWN!" > Trend and Incident Reporting > > If you become victimized by paper terrorism, contact the > Washington State Patrol Organized Crime Intelligence Unit at > (360) 753-3277, extension 121. All acts reaching a criminal > level should be referred to your local law enforcement agency or > prosecutor's office. She never mentioned "Paper Terrorism" perpetrated by government agencies, did she? Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to the relative magnitude of government victimizing citizen-units vs citizen-units snapping at the heels of government by means of the tactics she lists above? 1,000-to-1? 100,000-to-1? Karen's definition of what constitutes "Paper Terrorism" is, basically, anything in the way of communication, court pleadings, cases, liens, etc. that the government doesn't like. If she wants to fly with a subjective definition then she can't very well argue against the subjective view of citizen-units who feel they are being terrorized by numerous and multitudinous, often false or frivolous communications, court pleadings, suits, charges, liens, seizures, convictions, sentences, fines, etc. Their subjective views are at least as valid as Karen's or the government's. (She's an elected ass-wipe, but she's OUR elected ass-wipe! If we want to elect someone on the Totalitarian ticket, that's our right. There's no law that says a Representative has to represent our interests.)

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Re: Memo From...(3 of 7)
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(Part 3 of 7) > Paper terrorism has grown from a trend to a full scale > tactic used upon businesses, private individuals, > government services and elected officials. Translation: "There are signs the resistance is growing and becoming widespread." >Background > >Paper terrorism is designed to clog government services with >meaningless requests which consume time and disrupt schedules. >In the private sector paper terrorism is an attempt to extort >money, goods or services. As if the other requests they would like to be handling are not meaningless? Let's face it: Except as it provides them job security, bureaucrats regard all requests of any kind from citizen-units as meaningless, consumptive of time and disruptive of schedules. Nor can a government that is increasingly jailing its citizen-units and seizing their property without just cause or due process make even a thin claim to be concerned about "the private sector." > Some examples of paper terrorism activities: > >* Bogus liens placed upon personal property of government > officials and private individuals. Translation: "Last-ditch attempts to make officials accountable for their tyrranical actions. When citizen-units have been outrageously damaged by unaccountable officials they sometimes resort to filing liens against those responsible." >* Frivolous lawsuits filed in state and federal courts against > businesses and government entices [sic]. Translation: "Lawsuits with which those in power disagree." If it doesn't muss their hair they could care less if you sue someone for serving you hot coffee that's advertized as hot coffee or sue the manufacturer of a machine that has passed through 30 years of ownership and maintenance of dozens of third parties just because you were stupid enough to put your fingers in the gears. But sue a bureaucrat for being stupid, arrogant, abusive, vindictive and destructive of your rights and watch out! That's FRIVOLOUS! Apparently it's also now "terrorism." >* Drafting and passing counterfeit bank checks and other > fraudulent negotiable instruments aimed at defrauding > the financial community and businesses. Translation: "Devising well-researched instruments such as Public Order Money Certificates, payable the very moment lawful money is put back into circulation." She would have us think that resisters are out there writing bad checks, something only the government is allowed to do with impunity. >* Common Law Courts that issue homemade subpoenas > to citizens, businesses and government officials. Homemade? That's cute. Various common law entities have been created by various folk in the last 10-15 years in desperate attempts to put SOMETHING in place that would function lawfully and constitutionally. A few of those have been on the fringe, and those are the only ones that will ever be cited as examples, of course. Never mind that all the townships and other little political units all over the country were formed pretty much the same way. "That was THEN and this is NOW and WE ARE IN CHARGE! SHUT UP and SIT DOWN!" Don't you love government as we head into the 21st Century, the century which will see the final extinguishing of the light of freedom if people don't get off their asses and do something? (continued in Part 4)

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noise spheres
by Laszlo Vecsey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Are there any texts available on interpreting patterns found in noise spheres? - lv

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Re: quote
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Sun, 28 Sep 1997 at 19:11, Zooko Journeyman <zooko(a)xs4all.nl> farted: > Igor Chudov contributed a quote from some government manual: >> These anti-government extremists and supporters are convinced >> citizens are being systematically oppressed by an illegal, >> totalitarian government. They believe the time for traditional >> political reform has passed, that their freedom will only be >> secured by resistance to the law and attacks against the >> government in several forms. >> >> Members of these groups bond to one another and lose contact with >> other people who hold different opinions. The isolation works to >> reinforce their views, which in turn gives them new purpose. >> This new purpose may take ordinary ideas to extremes, rationalize >> their problems into blaming government, and cause members to >> compete with each other to make stronger statements. > Couldn't've said it better myself. > I see the same pattern in cypherpunks and in my non- (or > barely-) 'Netted extremist friends of the right, the > libertarian, and the left varieties. > I've argued with myself for years about whether the spread of > the Net would connect these people back to their fellow humans, > by offering uncensorable, violence-free communication channels, > or whether it help them to make virtual communities consisting > solely of people who reinforce their own beliefs. > I'm still hoping for the former... > Z, hopeful cynic Jerk! You don't have the slightest clue about what is going on over here, do you?

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Re: Digital Postage (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 23:04:24 -0700 > From: Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> > Subject: Re: Digital Postage (fwd) > At 2:04 PM -0700 9/28/97, Jim Choate wrote: > >I can assure you that any business will not use multiple protocols unless > >their interface is the same for all of them. There simply isn't enough > >business to have very many systems. > > While this is certainly true for remailers at the present, it is not true > for businesses in general. Most of the stores I deal with locally will > accept cash, checks or credit cards. The interface (and accounting) for > these is quite different. (E.g there is no online check for cash, like > there is for credit cards, and sometimes checks.) These are all the same payment mechanisms. I run a business and the actual accounting for cash, credit cards, etc. doesn't make my books a lot of difference except in what column I put the numbers. My bank certainly doesn't care where that money came from once deposited in my account from somebody elses account. I believe you are caught up in details of the system and not in differences between systems. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: Remailers and ecash
by phelix＠vallnet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 29 Sep 1997 02:10:39 -0500, "Robert A. Costner" <pooh(a)efga.org> wrote: > >At first I thought some of the stuff Monty Cantsin was discussing was >interesting, but it has gotten out of hand. I've asked the question >before, Why would remailer operators want to accept Ecash? After seeing >the conflicting messages coming from Mr. Catsin, I to rephrase it, why does >*Mr Catsin* want remailer operators to use Ecash? > >The first answer I got was so that remailer reliability could increase. >The theory as I understood it was that remailers were run like a hobby, not >a business, so the money would be an incentive to bring in professionalism. > So I proposed, and documented, that the minimum level to achieve this >would be a $50K investment over a year's time. This is in fact, more or >less what the Cracker remailer takes to run. Most of the resources are >donated in some way, but this is their equivalent retail value. Even so, >with Monty's pricing structure and Cracker's current level of traffic it >would be enormously profitable. > >Then Mr. Cantsin seemed to go back to the all you need are some spare parts >theory of remailer operation. Enormous profits of $200 per month, or even >$5,000 per year. Well, Cracker handles close to 25% of worldwide remailer >traffic of it's kind[1]. And it's not much. I would say this is due >mainly to the user interface. Making remailers more difficult to use by >adding Ecash is not going to increase traffic significantly. > > >I recommend that people start pricing at a quarter per message per hop > >In my opinion, and I've been known to be wrong, this is a seriously messed >up comment. A quarter per message is too much, much less a quarter per >hop. A price of 1/100 of a penny per message is closer to a proper >valuation. But the problem here is in the pricing model. It should not be >transactional unless to encourage the very casual user. A pricing model >should be flat rate. One price for a month, or even a year's service. The >net is based on a peering price structure, not an inter-lata structure. >Trying to compute or add charges at each hop is against the nature of >information flow for the net. > Why? Each hop adds value to the message (in this case, increased anonymity/security). Shouldn't a person have to pay more for increased value? Also, how would a user pay per-month to each remailer and maintain total anonymity and ease of use. Flat rate pricing requires one to open an "account" with each remailer he would ever use before sending the first message. Then at each hop, the message is linked to some "account" on the server which is someway linked to the user (specifically, a set of messages going through a server can be linked to the same "account", which to me is totally unacceptable). This seems overly complicated and could compromise the users anonymity. Finally, with flat rate, what would prevent a person from spamming? > >We are talking about how to get a working payment system up for > >remailers which gets us great service and provides privacy and > >security. > >The point I have never gotten past is how you expect a payment system to >change the level of service? The next point I'm still shaking my head over >is what about remailer services is not up to your standards? The only >thing I have heard you mention is latency, which is a feature programmed >into the remailers. If anything, people would pay to add latency, not to >take latency away. > For me, the main problems I see are the number of remailers available and spam prevention. Going commercial solves these problems. Also, there will still be free remailers around. > >Remailers are used by a small highly > >specialized market of perhaps a few hundred people. > >There is some truth in this statement. But there are also remailers run by >a variety of companies such as hotmail, juno, and the like. They encompass >millions of users. Millions of users who want a remailer, but will not >tolerate the level of entry required for a Type-I or Mixmaster remailer. >Until client software can be improved and made as easy to use as an >integrated spelling checker, the "advanced" remailers will have no true >market share. (Oh, I forgot. Most of the world uses email clients without >integrated spell checkers.) Agreed. I've just finished going through the Eudora API docs and I think sending a message through remailers can be as easy as clicking one button on the toolbar (just like with signing a messages with the pgp plugin). For everyday use, everything else (like choosing the remailer chain) can be automated. -- Phelix

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