In Message 19 Dec 92 19:45:33 EST,
Hal
I suspect that instead the approach would be to claim that remailer operators are responsible for the material their remailers produce, regardless of its original source.
Such a policy would be a plausible extension of current Internet policies, IMO. RFC 822, the document which describes the format of Internet mail message, in session 4.4.2 discusses the "Sender:" field, and says, "Since the critical function served by the 'Sender' field is identification of the agent responsible for sending mail and since computer programs cannot be held accountable for their behavior, it is strongly recommended that when a computer program generates a message, the HUMAN who is responsible for that program be referenced as part of the 'Sender' field mailbox specification." [Capitalization in the original.] The need for a person to take responsibility for each piece of mail that is sent would tend to lead to the policy I mentioned.
Perhaps the solution to this is to run encrypted remailers, anonymously. The remailer could either run on it's own, or under instructions by an anonymous source [i.e PGPed instructions and software updates signed by the owner who has created a second key for his identity of remailer operator [Let's call him Oz]. Example: Joe creates an account on a random system, installing the nessicary software to run a PGP remailer. This software would be modified to accept instructions from a specific anonymous identity, for which Joe creates one, leaving the public key with the remailer. The remailer also has it's own key pair to decrypt and forward messages [of course]. People could now route their messages through Joe's remailer to anywhere they wish. The remailer should be set up to NOT keeps logs, except errors. Now Joe decides he wants to update his remailer with the latest scripts. He mails te scripts [thru various remailers], encrpyted with the remailers key and signed by Oz's key. The remailer decrypts the mail, verifies that it belongs to Oz, and updates itself. In this way no person can be held responsible for mail passing thru it's remailer. The only way to stop such a remailer would be to downright shut it down, or to communicate to Oz via the remailer [the scripts would allow Oz to pick up any mail left directly to the remailer withour a forwarding header -- of course it would reroute the messages, encrypted, thru various other well-known remailers]. TTFN! DrZaphod [AC/DC] / [DnA][HP] [drzaphod@ncselxsi.uucp] Technicolorized