Forwarded message:
Charles Gimon wrote:
Mpls. Strib did a piece this morning, front page, about AltaVista, Dejanews, etc. Well-worn territory to readers of this list. Your words can come back to haunt you, all that stuff. One paragraph that deserves rebuttal from those of you who are better-informed:
"Of course, technology is working on solutions to itself, but mechanisms that would hide the name of a message's author, such as cryptography and anonymous remailers, are convoluted and incomplete."
Rebuttal? Why? Remailers generally are. There aren't enough penet.fi type remailers, which people prefer not only because there is a mapping but because it's easier to use. (It's also a bit more secure if there are c2-nym remailers mapped to penet.fi type remailers in various countries).
Not everyone is on a system that is PGP-friendly. Handling PGP-messages from commercial services or even most mailer apps is awkward at best, and the commands for mixmaster/c'punk remailers are not as standard as they could be. (A PGP3 DLL would improve the use of crypto and anon- remailers quite a bit.)
From the excerpt you posted, it doesn't seem as if they were criticizing remailers... which is a pretty good thing.
I'd rate the whole article as neither good nor bad. It was on the front page of the paper edition, so I was a little unhappy at an offhand remark that might discourage people from using remailers. I'm planning on doing the letters-to-the-editor thing, emphasis on saying good things about remailers. The whole article is online at the site mentioned.
Author was Jonathan Gaw; no e-mail address given. Star Tribune Online is at http://www.startribune.com