-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- From: edgar@spectrx.Saigon.COM (Edgar W. Swank)
Anon-To: <next destination> Encrypt-With: <some DES or IDEA key>
I'd like to point out that the "-ca" function of PGP could be used to perform this function if Encrypt-With: specified a PGP pass-phrase rather than a direct key.
This sounds like a good idea. The user would have to have some scripts to decrypt incoming anonymous-address messages using this pass phrase (or some sequence of pass phrases if more than one remailer was used for the anonymous address).
I'd also like to suggest that the message- body to be encrypted require heading and trailing delimiters such as:
-----BEGIN MESSAGE BODY----- -----END MESSAGE BODY-----
Note delimiters would not be part of message body and would not be encrypted.
These anonymous addresses do need a distinction between the "message address" (or "envelope") and the message body. The anonymous address gets decrypted at each step, and the message body gets encrypted at each step using the scheme above. But Eric Hughes pointed out that we already have such a distinction in the RFC822 message headers vs body. We should use that existing structure rather than try to create our own. That means that anonymous addresses should be designed to fit into mail headers. Unfortunately many mail agents make this difficult or inconvenient right now, but perhaps that is an area where we could make some improvements. In this model, we would not need message body delimiters, since mail already has its message body delimited distinct from its headers. If we do process the message body with encryption at each stage, I do have an idea which could be useful. If the body which is being encrypted is already in the format of an ASCII-encoded message using the standard RFC822 encryption used in PGP, RIPEM and PEM, then rather than just encrypting it it could be de-ASCII'd, then encrypted, then re-ASCII'd. This would keep it from increasing in size by a factor of 4/3 at each encryption step. Hal -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.1 iQCVAgUBK0kHvKgTA69YIUw3AQHBuwP/ekp1feh06tLHwxws49DE3wVxnu/36Yg7 oW2l43n3llgRJC+r/KYJ2+5LTG0/f1Ib/R8c4qxUJzZeCj7zABSdJ6KSwIlwmfP6 Djz0vOBnife6CvhQRi+T/8NuFqFIzlxO1vK+7tG9KWshxP+7AMayGOLuY0pOTREX 7brcJHnn7Mg= =9Uss -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Distribution: CYPHERPUNKS >INTERNET:CYPHERPUNKS@TOAD.COM