From: Greg Broiles <greg@ideath.goldenbear.com>
I think adopting a submissive or apologetic stance with respect to the operation of a remailer is a mistake. What we do is protected by the First amendment, supports a 200+ year tradition of anonymous political speech in America, provides a valuable service to a worldwide community, and can help avoid the very abuse they are accused of facilitating.
The problem is that the time when someone complains about the remailer is exactly when they have received some obnoxious message. This is often their first exposure to the idea of anonymous remailers. Such people are the last ones who are going to be receptive or interested in hearing a lecture about how remailers are protecting the First Amendment. I generally do my best to avoid getting into a debate with these people. I tell them I have added them to the block list, and usually that is the end of it. So while I think Greg's approach is fine as part of an intellectual debate over the pros and cons of anonymity, it does not address the most frequent complaints I see as a remailer operator. I hope that over time more people will become exposed to the idea of remailers and anonymity other than in the form of some annoying anonymous message. Then I think they will be better able to deal with it when they do get some problem mail.
The child who was the target of the "Mr. Pedophile" message(s) should have been taught how to use remailers and how to maintain his privacy on the net so that, if he really is the victim of some sort of random child stalker, it won't happen again.
That message was not posted to Cypherpunks. It asked in some graphic detail whether this boy engaged in sexual relations with his parents. However, the mother was surprisingly calm about it, and simply asked to be blocked. The fact that she knew about blocking gave me the impression she was remailer-savvy, and as I wrote above this seems to make a big difference. Hal