Given how widely know my email address is, I am saddened that people would post this kind of unsubstantiated rumor without any attempt to check on the validity. Anonymizer has always offered its services to all comers. This has always included law enforcement. They have used our services to keep an eye on certain websites for many years, without tipping them off to the focus of their interests. Seeing "fbi.gov" in the log files is a bit of a giveaway. They have no special access to our systems, and no ability to monitor our users. Describing our policy of open access as "sucking up to the TLAs" is absurd. I would have thought my history in this field would have earned me some consideration before jumping to that kind of conclusion. Does government and industry have no rights to, or needs for, privacy? It seems a hypocritical position for Cypherpunks to take. -Lance Cottrell At 5:34 PM -0500 11/23/01, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
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Status: U Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 16:02:10 -0800 To: cypherpunks@lne.com From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com> Subject: Anonymizing Scam Sender: owner-cypherpunks@lne.com
Below are strange statements coming from Lance Cottrell. Is there no anonymizer that is not sucking up to the TLAs? Worse, has there ever been?
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http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/11/20/privacy.reut/index.html
One company that is still making money off privacy is Anonymizer.com, a San Diego-based company that offers anonymous Web surfing for $50 a year, or $5 a month. The company has 20,000 active subscribers, said President Lance Cottrell.
"We're still seeing very strong growth," Cottrell said. "Most people are looking to prevent their boss, insurance company, spouse, ISP (Internet Service Provider) from knowing where they're going."
Even so, Anonymizer.com began a push six months ago to market its service to corporations, including law and investigation firms, and the U.S. government, he said.
"Intelligence agencies have been using us for years, especially since September 11," Cottrell said. "They use us to keep an eye on bad guy sites" with covert monitoring.
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The pattern: initial big deal about helping the public protect its privacy, then boom, a later revelation it was impossible to continue ... well, the reasons vary, but the cover story is always the need for money, the Judas rationale.
Meanwhile, the fabulous surfing data archive allegedly inviolate, or never retained, or no way to ever know who was using the service, that is the data all free-gift marketers aim to collect.
Were any anonymizing archives ever trashed or truly protected against concurrent snarfing? Is Safeweb laughing like ZKS, like Lance? First, the US, then EU, then CN, all the way to MD.
What does this say about commercial anonymizing services, and remailers? And crypto, especially free PGP, and the honeypot AES?
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-- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
-- Lance M. Cottrell lcottrell@anonymizer.com Anonymizer, Inc. President Voice: (619) 725-3180 X304 Fax: (619) 725-3188 www.Anonymizer.com