If the remailer issued it's own non-blinded stamps, the remailer would have to keep a list of canceled stamps. (For as long as that series of stamps remains valid.) If the remailer used Chaumiam e-cash no logs would need to be kept at all.
I was not under the impression that Chaum e-cash was free from the need to keep a list of spent cash. Do you meant that it would be the bank, not the remailer, that would keep the database?
Another aspect worth mentioning is that message splitting can make the kinds of statistical correlations that Wei Dai was looking at more of a danger. [...] Ideally you'd want to dribble them out at some standard rate, a rate at which you always send a message whether you have something to send or not. But this may introduce unacceptable latency.
If everybody ran a second level remailer, and if they always forwarded something (of very nearly the same size) when they recieved an encrypted message, then without compromising the users machine it would be imposible to say when a message was delivered. Some of the messages forwarded would need to be junk. Is there a polite way to send mail to a remailer, and ask it to junk the mail? Some of the messages forwarded would have to be 'part n of m' messages.
Noyb
Messages are not identifiable as "part n of m" except at the last hop. If you are a remailer, then they are only visible as such to you. In transit they appear as any other message. Yes, there is a polite way to send to a remailer's bit bucket with some remailers. Ghio remailers will trash any message sent which requests remailing to "null". Remailer@nately is a Ghio remailer. I can't remember if I implemented that in Mixmaster. If not, I will. -------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell who does not speak for CASS/UCSD loki@nately.ucsd.edu PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Encrypted mail welcome. Home page http://nately.ucsd.edu/~loki/ Check out my essay on the next generation remailer Mixmaster on the WWW page. For anon remailer info, mail remailer@nately.ucsd.edu Subject: remailer-help "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche