I would like to expand on Hal's suggestion that remailer operators post their policies on a)keeping logs and b) divulging same. Hal says he keeps logs "for a few days" and might divulge logs of "really vicious, racially or sexually harrassing" messages. Presumably this would also cover anonymous threatening messages, blackmail, etc. We've already discussed use of PGP by pedophiles to encrypt incriminating diaries. It gets better. PGP and remailers can be used to encrypt and ship "kiddy porn" GIF files. Even private possession of such material is a serious crime in the USA. A chain of anonymous and encrypted remailers could be used to drop kiddy porn into newsgroups like alt.sex.pictures I'm sure that would create quite a stir! Perhaps Duncan or another attorney would like to comment on legal liability of remailers in these kinds of situations. I don't think there's currently any law on what records remailers would have to keep; if you didn't have them, you couldn't give them up. If this becomes a problem, expect legislation regulating or even outright banning remailers. However, if remailer code has spread over many national boundaries, such legislation may not be effective. By the way, no-one has yet responded to my request to add features to Eric's remailer to 1)remove the "sig" after "--" and 2)Anonymously post to newsgroups available at the remailer site. Both these features are present in the Australian remailer at Pax. Unfortunately that remailer seems less secure than Eric's in that it keeps more or less permanent records of its users at the remailer site and it doesn't seem to be able to chain to other remailers. -- edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank) SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005 Silicon Valley, Ca