I'm not sure if I buy that remailers are even going to have serious problems in the future. I see two approaches: 1) The aforementioned ecash-based system. We don't have a problem getting people to smuggle drugs, because people in the drug game get lots of money, women, cars, etc. I wonder how many drug dealers would do it just for "moral goodness" (actually, a lot of last-stage dealers do that, just buying for their friends and distributing, which obviously doesn't work for remailers; also, allegedly the LSD distribution chain is mostly profit-free for the whole thing...in general, though, drugs are a highly profitable industry). 2) A system which remails without the consent of the remailing; a worm or something which roams, infects, and as payload, will spontaneously form "cells" in a mix-net. Lots of ways to do this. Also, the mix-net itself can be used for passing the messages around. Using anonymous services like yahoo for this kind of thing is one form, but something which went a step beyond, and actually took over random machines on DSL, etc. to use as middleman remailers, would be taking this to another level. Additionally, I think a level of steganography is needed, both to protect the compromised nodes from detection and disinfection, and for general security. I generally agree with your assessment of the current "amateur" remailer network, modulo the fact that a lot of remailer operators have legal background, and would be content to actually fight protracted legal battles. I guess a lot of them would fold fairly quickly if it were actually unequivocally exposing themselves to serious criminal liability. I don't think we'll have to wait long for this kind of theorizing on anonymous communications and prosecution to no longer be merely academic. -- Ryan Lackey [RL7618 RL5931-RIPE] ryan@havenco.com CTO and Co-founder, HavenCo Ltd. +44 7970 633 277 the free world just milliseconds away http://www.havenco.com/ OpenPGP 4096: B8B8 3D95 F940 9760 C64B DE90 07AD BE07 D2E0 301F