-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On Mon, 20 May 1996, Hal wrote:
I was contacted by the FBI on Friday due to some threatening mail which was apparently sent through my remailer. According to 18 USC 875(c), "Whoever transmits in interstate commerce any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both." I may not be able to continue operating either of my remailers (alumni.caltech.edu and shell.portal.com) for much longer due to this kind of abuse. [...]
My thought is to turn the block list concept on its head, and make it a "permit list". Simply, the remailer will only send mail to people who have voluntarily indicated their willingness to receive it. Someone who has not sent in a message granting this permission will not be sent mail. For larger forums such as newsgroups and mailing lists, permission may be granted by some consensus mechanism. Most would be blocked, but a few like alt.anonymous.messages and the cypherpunks list would be permitted, and others could be added if they wished.
This should hopefully essentially eliminate complaints about abuse, much more effectively than the current method of block lists. People who want to test the remailer by sending mail to themselves, as most people do when they are learning, can simply register themselves on the permit list. People who want to receive anonymous mail, or participate in anonymous mailing lists, can register themselves. People who want to use nyms can register themselves. People who run other remailers can register. It's all voluntary, and if someone does get some objectionable message at least they will know that they granted permission. They can always ask to be taken off the list.
One problem I see with this is that if even one remailer operated using the block lists instead of permit lists, then every other remailer in the chain could hypothetically be held accountable for the contents of the message. This idea of permit lists makes sense, but I am not sure it would really solve anything. - -- Mark =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= markm@voicenet.com | finger -l for PGP key 0xe3bf2169 http://www.voicenet.com/~markm/ | d61734f2800486ae6f79bfeb70f95348 ((2b) || !(2b)) | Old key now used only for signatures "The concept of normalcy is just a conspiracy of the majority" -me -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMaE8jrZc+sv5siulAQGFwwQAprIIgRZKkOuLfYOM4+or6igApgppMm/2 8zMKgQeOPd7bXhbs7hCp4Rg+E1CHZTNsTwE3lmPNBxzDXNIpLxumCVnyXDpvO64Z ypKxGwjGun9FLFKpDIUP/pVv0oK1oN6Lw8xqeS1Id7RTWAYERAj20R5MRKe7TRL6 FNzPGzPFdRs= =q4QF -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----