My last response to Mr. Wells was in private and I hoped he would take that course himself in future communication, but as it stands he now has screamed insults at me twice in a row in this forum, and I must address his latest unanswered letter; most of these following points are from my private letter. The fundamental issue at stake is: is Mr. Wells routinely and regularly monitoring the content of the email he forwards via his so-called `anonymous server'? The answer is: definitely. To do so is very ethically borderline, IMHO, no matter who his `family'. This was enough to alarm me seriously to the point of writing a very vehement letter condemning this type of `surveillance'. Yes, he has provided this service for a long time, he is doing so voluntarily, he has a select group of participants with a particular sensitivity and need, `most' of whom are satisfied with it, this I all acknowledge. However, it's evident to me that all users of anonymous services have a set of unconscious expectations, foremost among them that the operator will not routinely be reading their mail. I pointed out to Mr. Wells that breaking the violation of trust in privacy may lead the operator to breach the trust in anonymity. Merely the knowledge of content can lead the operator to serious quandaries that can be wholly avoided in completely adhering to privacy. Furthermore, an operator who does not strive to adhere conscientiously to the set of unconscious user expectations, even if working on a voluntary basis, is actually doing his users a disservice. Mr. Wells' rambling letter, replete with references to his personal philosophy of Objectivism, is a complicated set of rationalizations that amount to `yes, I regularly monitor my server's email traffic, in fact I consider it my duty.' Given his unswerving obstinacy to this practice, I asked that he make this policy clear in his introductory statements to the server, but he has consistently failed to reassure me that he actually has done so, making me wonder to what extent of the readers in the newsgroup and of his server (a substantial overlap according to him) are aware of this very serious matter of `systematic observation'. Are any people using this server as a plain vanilla server, or do they all realize that they are establishing a very strong personal arrangement of trust with this operator, who considers their relationship analogous to the protective Platonic intimacy between a therapist and his patients? Who will personally censor messages he thinks will unduly upset them? Mr. Wells tells us that `this is neither the time nor the place to discuss the wherefors and whys of abuse recovery; you'll just have to take it as a given that the rules used for understanding people in general won't work so well when applied to this newsgroup, or to my anonymous service.' Mr. Wells, I don't claim to be a specialist in the area as you insinuate yourself, but I believe there are fundamental laws of respect and candor that are appropriate -- *necessary* -- for *all* people, and my concern is precisely that you may be not be adhering to it in this case in presenting your policies. Your polarized dance of defensiveness and offensiveness indicates to me clearly a nerve has been struck. Mr. Wells' letter is full of seemingly contradictory statements. He seems to think that `confidentiality' and `privacy' are `two distinct functions', and suggests that in his regular email monitoring he actually achieves a `tighter, higher standard of confidentiality' than Helsingius or Kleinpaste's servers. Also, his attitudes on the limitations of his actual commitments to the people who use his service are extremely disturbing. He says `Their rights do not extend to arbitary protection of their confidentiality or privacy' and the actual protections granted are `mine to choose' and `not implicit in an anonymous server'. I find these comments simultaneously highly revealing and alarming. From my point of view the sheer all-encompassing trust awarded a server operator by users requires every conceivable commitment on the latter's part to *transcend* the common denominator in user expectations of privacy. Mr. Wells says he personally handles `half the traffic' of the sexual abuse recovery newsgroup, and that `most' of its users and his `potentially legitimate' correspondents are satisfied, and that most people who have `expressed dislike for my policies' are coincidentally `outsiders'. His service is `integral to a specific community'. Perhaps so, but how would he react to another server operator specifically serving that group? His statements seem to reflect a perverse pride in his monopoly on the group's anonymity and secret knowledge of its participants. IMHO, this is precisely the kind of extremely compromising position encryption would effortlessly avert. Finally, I'm extremely disappointed in Mr. Wells transparently vitriolic rhetoric to deflect the primary issues of systematic monitoring and truth in advertising to ugly subsidiary sideshows, such as with his expert diagnosis of me as `mentally unbalanced'. This classicly ridiculous ad hominem insult is particularly ironically insensitive coming from someone who professes to tiptoe around areas requiring the utmost delicacy in human interaction in supporting people with mental anguish! Yes, my mind is indeed teetering on the brink of a breakdown -- from Mr. Wells blows, who says of me, `he should consider himself honored that I bothered to tell him where he went wrong.' -- such words bespeak an attitude of shocking, sickening arrogance and intolerance. Caveat emptor! P.S. I will respond no further to Mr. Wells in this forum.