Black Unicorn <unicorn@access.digex.net> writes:
I believe anonymous remailers have some use. But they are so targeted to prevent GOVERNMENT observation and intercepts, that they just plain look bad.
I strongly disagree with this. Anonymous remailers as presently constructed will be almost completely ineffective against any significant government attempts to surveil email traffic. The government does have the resources today to defeat most uses of remailers. Since present-day remailers lack padding features, the correspondence between incoming and outgoing messages, even with encryption, is relatively easy to establish. This is made worse by the lack of general support for reordering, which renders the task almost trivial. Instead, anonymous remailers are clearly targetted against non-government traffic analysis, generally local associates, system operators, employers, supervisors, and so on. They allow people to communicate without repercussions and retribution at work or at school. They let people exchange email in an insecure environment while hiding both the message address and its contents. They allow whistle blowers to expose malfeasance without being punished. These are the kinds of things the remailers are good for. Claims here that remailers are designed to support sedition or to prevent government surveillance are both wrong and harmful. This kind of material could show up at some future prosecution of a remailer operator. It is important that we understand clearly what the capabilities and limitations of current remailers are. Hal