smb@research.att.com wrote:
Do you want an example? Here's how to shut down an anonymous remailer. First, find a name for a host that no longer exists. Send a note through the remailer to someone putatively on that host, making it appear like a stolen account (bin@foo.bar.edu, or some such). The mail should appear to discuss criminal activity, and be signed with a name from the proper ethnic group. The message will be queued forever, of course, and will likely be stored on the backup tapes for the mail spool directory. Next, send a message through the remailer to president@whitehouse.gov, threatening the president. Poof -- the Secret Service *will* come investigating (those guys have no sense of humor). They may or may not believe that the planted note is genuine. But they will approach the appropriate dean to demand that this tool of criminal activity be shut down.
Well, this apocraphyl scene is easily avoided - remailers can be configured to refuse remailing to whitehouse.gov. But then this is the Secret Service. Are they more likely to a) seize all equipment peripherally related and a bunch that isn't b) inquire about having anonymous mail blocked Undoubtedly we could launch into a discussion of why it is anybody with a pocket full of change can walk up to a payphone and leave a variety of threats at the whitehouse switchboard - the phone company need not fear having its equipment seized, while a computer used in forwarding mail containing the same threats will probably be taken along with anything else the SS feels like taking.
Quick -- how many remailers have the support of the university? How many boards of trustees -- at state universities, often linked to the government -- will back them, if the Secret Service ``requests'' that they be shut down.
Gee, I don't know. Does the phone company have any government deals, say to manufacture products using a government designed chip, that may be at risk if its found out that phone company equipment is constantly being used for threats?? The point is we are in a research & development stage (if you will) with anonymous remailers, reputations, filters, digital cash, dc-nets, etc. It is very likely that the projected reality, desired reality, and actual reality will be quite different; nevertheless, experimentation continues.