On Wed, May 14, 1997 at 11:30:36PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
At 9:25 PM -0800 5/14/97, Kent Crispin wrote:
[...]
Collusion between a carefully--or even randomly--selected chain of, say, 20 of these various and mutually-hostile groups would seem to be "unlikely."
Kent, stop babbling and spend a few hours reading up on the basics of how remailers work, the issues of collusion, and the discussions we've had for several years on these issues.
Hmm. I did read, and I thought I understood this. I claim that if the remailers collude, then there in no anonymity. Correct? Even if I insert my own remailer in the list it doesn't help, if the others are all in cahoots. This seems pretty obvious. They all compare logs, and saved copies of the messages, and my message can be tracked from beginning to end. Right? I see a list of remailers posted on cypherpunks periodically -- a "cypherpunks" approved list, therefore. Lucky Green admits publically that he personally knows several of the remailer operators. And clearly, remailer operators must share a common ideological focus... There might even be a few honest remailer operators out there, but undoubtedly they have been heavily diluted by those that are part of the cypherpunks conspiracy. So the odds of picking a colluding remailer chain are pretty high. When I send my mail the first one in the chain will notice mail from songbird, and alert his buddies. If an honest remailer is in the chain the mail will conveniently be lost, of course. Only chains composed of co-conspirators will allow my mail to get through... You will probably say that this was an insane conspiracy theory, and that I don't understand how the remailers operate, and how ideologically different the operators all are. You might think that I am ignorant, or being facetious, or that I am really just out of touch with reality. But, on the other hand, you should be very familiar with this mode of thought -- it is so similar to your "analyses" of the "gubmint". You are quite fond of clever caricatures, of sly and subtle inuendo, of imputing slimy motives and conspiracies, of looking at the worst in people...all justified by righteous anger, of course. Of course, to you righteous anger justifies murdering babies...("Broken eggs, and all that." -- TCM) However, it's not my prefered mode of thought, and I can't sustain it for long: It does seem fairly unlikely that a large percentage of remailers collude, and in theory it is probably fairly safe to send through them. At this time I can't really think of anything I have to say that requires anonymity -- my comment to Lucky was intended to be a light-hearted reference to my humble stature among the cypherpunks. "Negativity is an easy habit, often confused with sophistication." -- Anne Beetem -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html