Teodore Ts'o writes:
At MIT, we're considering to start up an anonymous remailer, but with the proviso that if we get a complaint about a particular pseudonym is used to send harassing email, or email with threatening violence, and some other well-defined occassions, that we would reveal, to the proper authorities, the email address used for sending replies back.
A warning to that effect would be sent back to an email address the first time the anonymous contact service saw that particular email address, and assigned it a pseudonym address for replies. This way, users would have the proper expectations of privacy.
Hmm... Could you briefly outline those "well-defined" occasions? How about this case: I send you a complaint about somebody who has repeatedly harrassed everybody soc.culture.india/tamil/srilanka with anonymous postings about faked reports about then indian army raping civilians in sri lanka?
Ultimately, I think this is the only way that anonymous remailers will be able to function. Otherwise, the public outcry the first time one of these remailers are abused will cause these full remailers to be shutdown, or otherwise cut off from the net.
Exactly as has happened to anon.penet.fi. ;-) Julf