At 7:22 AM 9/2/96, Bill Stewart wrote:
From what I know of remailer history, the main original goal of the cypherpunks-style remailer was to provide security against traffic analysis by eavesdroppers, rather than to prevent the recipient from knowing the sender's address, though everybody pretty quickly realized that the latter was an interesting feature, especially coupled with posting to Usenet.
No, the focus was at _least_ as much on providing anonymity as on protection from eavesdroppers or traffic analysts. More so, actually. How do I know this? Well, I was the one who did the presentation on Chaumian mixes at the first meeting, describing them as remailers and using paper envelopes-within-envelopes to illustrate the concept. Later that day, in the "Crytpo Anarchy Game" we played to educate the attendees, remailers were used to post anonymous offers of goods and services, to make contact in message pools, and to generally implement a crypto-anarchic, distributed system. (With some obvious flaws, stalls, and other weirdnesses.) Still, it embodied most of what we see today (and a lot more that we still haven't managed to implement). The next afternoon, Hugh Daniel, Eric Hughes, and I went out for some bagels and talked about what had been learned. Either Hugh or Eric had the idea of coding up the remailer in C or Perl. As it turned out, Eric was the one to do it, a few weekends later, using Perl (which he learned enough of on Saturday to then do on Sunday). The first remailer was put for use and immediately began to be used for anonymous postings. And all of the early uses were explicitly to anonymize the sender, not to deter eavesdropping (which conventional crypto works well for, anyway). The Kleinpaste-style remailer was in a nascent stage, and Julf was running one on his site. But we all knew the longterm advantages of chained remailers, and, of course, even the very first Hughes remailer supported arbitrary chaining. And we also knew of the central defect of the Kleinpaste-style anonymizer, that law enforcement would seek the records through subpoena. As it turned out, penet lasted longer than I for one thought it would. PGP encryption was added soon after to the Hughes-style remailer, by Hal Finney, as I recall. Later developments, by Matt Ghio, Lance Cottrell, etc., added to the capabilities. So, the anonymizing and arbitrary chaining (which is for protection against collusion of the remailers and subpoenas of logs) features were there from the start. Even before the start, as the "Crypto Anarchy Game" had them. (I've been clear that it was Eric Hughes who coded the first Perl version, but I feel I have to make my own role clear. There are some critics of me here on this list who have claimed "Tim has never done a thing for Cypherpunks except talk." Well, besides organizing the first meeting with Eric, and giving the morning talk on the topics mentioned, and demonstrating the role of mixes and digital cash, and writing articles on many topics, and setting up BlackNet (which actually works, and is not just an idea), and on and on, I'm satisfied with my contributions. Your mileage may vary.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."