-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tom Bryce writes: [BTW, welcome to the list]
Hmmm. But even with a psuedonym like that, people can still claim you were Dr. Death, and Dr. Death will have posted enough stuff about enough things so the Dr. and you can be linked fairly certainly, isn't this right?
There is a distinct danger that one can be identified, with a fairly high degree of confidence, by the characteristics of one's writing style. If one holds particularly unusual views, the content of expression may belie one's pseudonymous identity. Altering one's writing style is a nontrivial problem for AI researchers, but a human can do a decent job of it. About all one can do about one's distinguishing _opinions_ is to refrain entirely from posting under one's own name. If you think safe sex with animals (safe bestiality doesn't have the same ring to it ;) should be taught in public schools, and you've posted to that effect, you're simply stuck with the fact that hardly anyone will believe that someone else could be behind a pseudonym which shares that opinion. Basically, if you choose to identify yourself implicitly, that's your problem.
There's a reason why one should prefer the telephone over mail for many matters. That is, no one can record your call (legally) and prove that you said a certain thing at a certain time,
Hold the phone ! As I understand the law, only one party to a telephone call has to be aware of the recording for it to be perfectly legal. Someone not party to the call can't do it, but any one of the people talking can do it.
while they can keep your letter and prove you wrote a certain thing. Honestly, the chance of someone posting a fraudulent message under someone else's email address to the cypherpunks list is pretty slim,
It's happened. Allow me to weigh in on the heart of this signing requirement debate. I don't see a need at present to require dig sigs in messages to the list. I'm nobody's anarchist, but like Blanc I am uncomfortable with the idea of imposing a restriction like this on the rest of the list on principle. Meanwhile, the suggestion that the list software be adapted to verify signatures on incoming messages qualifies the entire discussion as profitable, IMHO. On the theme of transparency and standardization, I think the important thing is to develop a generally applicable patch to Majordomo to handle authentication like this. Ideally, some people would get together with Brent Chapman and incorporate authentication of signed messages in a future release of Majordomo. I'd love to volunteer for a project like this but I don't believe I can spare the time. - -L. Futplex McCarthy; PGP key by finger or server "Don't say my head was empty, when I had things to hide...." --Men at Work -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLtvqe2f7YYibNzjpAQFTsQP/eAd+nmCT+aYJ+gioyLFOz9Vsyw3THwlL UIi+57XrL+SwT+7AHga/upWy1vdos8bEKrV2XWIbaCpda5QoE/34VjfIhkYE5OZB Yq6a1uZ51wAEOV4ynwa9p65VzMMspqb4tSl7KoqiqpjBtaoCGPHsxQp2EhnOk5YM 7S+e+lmgSWA= =ltql -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----