fa161f121ec06c2dd5b366ff7460fb12@anonymous.poster>

The most frequent request we have been receiving so far is, in fact, about the idendity of the originator of the anonymous messages. Some people are being polite, others are not. Basically, all the ones who write to abuse@*.* want to know the email address of the one who has offended/harassed/spammed/blackmailed them.

The idea to get across is that that information is not available. The snail mail services in various countries allow anonymous mail, after all, so why should e-mail be any different? People can deposit mail in public mailboxes with no return address on the envelope. People can call from payphones and not have the call traceable back to them. People should also be educated that a From: address, even when attached, cannot be relied upon for accuracy. At least anonymous e-mail lets the recipient know, in advance, that the sender wishes to conceal his/her true identity.

That is, it is true that a very significant % of all messages which pass thru the mixmaster network is just trash.

Comments, anyone?

Even "trash" is valuable as cover traffic to thwart traffic analysis, especially in the Mixmaster world where packets are intended to be virtually indistinguishable. Once remailer-operators get involved in value judgements as to which anonymous e-mail transactions have redeeming social value, we have sown the seeds of censorship. We empower the Gary Burnores of the world to censor by intimidation when content neutrality is not maintained. For example, if a certain signal to noise ratio were to be used as a criteria for the validity of the remailer net, then a self-destruct device has just been built into it. An attacker need only inject enough noise to exceed the threshold and bring the network down. Consider the episode last year with Gary Burnore and DataBasix vs. Jeff Burchell and his Mailmasher and Huge Cajones machines. Made-to-order abuse appeared right on cue to reinforce the claims that Burnore and his girlfriend Belinda Bryan had made. And now we've learned the real truth behind the whole episode. While Gary Burnore was living with another girlfriend in Santa Clara, CA, he was also molesting her teenaged daughter. An anonymous whistleblower attempted to warn the girl's mother as well as her school officials by anonymous e-mail. Burnore went ballistic and falsely claimed "harassment". But the whistleblower was ultimately vindicated when Burnore pled guilty to the molestation charge, was placed on probation, and was required to register as a sex offender. Unable to silence the whistleblower, Burnore began a campaign of harassment against the operators of the remailers that were being used to expose him. IOW, if you can't refute the message, shoot the messenger. And if you can't shoot the messenger, attempt to disable his means of communication (the remailers net). I recounted this case history, which can be researched in various usenet archives by anyone interested, just to demonstrate that one man's "harassment" can well be another man's investigative journalism, even if the journalist or whistleblower is not in a position to expose him/herself to retaliation by the wrongdoer, which has been (coincidentally?) reported by virtually anyone who has dared to challenge Gary Burnore publicly.