Philippe Nave writes:
I think the single most important thing we could do for remailer
operators
would be to figure out how to make the remailers *truly* *anonymous*. That is, we need a net.hack of some sort that allows remailers to send their messages in a way that leaves no trace whatsoever of the original poster *and* leaves no trace of the remailer itself.
Er, if we knew how to do that, we wouldn't need remailers. :)
Touche! This is, of course, correct. In an ideal scenario, everyone would be able to personally establish anonymity for their own communications and the concept of 'anonymous remailers' would be moot. In the meantime, I suggest that it would be worth quite a bit of effort on the part of a few wizards to get a 'truly' anonymous remailer up and running for the benefit of the masses. I keep seeing messages to the effect of 'sorry, you can't get there from here', but that just tells me that the problem is non-trivial. [Note that I'm not pooh-poohing the considered opinions of people who know quite a bit more about email and the Net than myself; I simply remain stubbornly optimistic about the capabilities of a large group of skilled Internauts.] Also, don't misconstrue my ravings to be an indictment of remailers as they exist today - I see that many valuable lessons are being learned about interoperability, reliability, and real-world exposure to problem situations. Even our beloved LD has helped in that regard, bless his pointed head, by showing us what a single deranged loon can do to a network of remailers. I simply maintain that now is a good time to reopen the study of 'true' anonymity so that further remailer developments are added to a strong foundation. ObEcash: Peons like me who are not capable of the bizarre hacks required for 'true' anonymity would most likely embrace ecash payment systems for remailing service with enthusiasm. Having demonstrated my ignorance of low-level email transport techniques, I now retire to the shadows again........ :) Philippe