At 5:48 PM 12/11/94, L. Todd Masco wrote:

This is where my train of thought dovetails with the newsgroup question: bringing a new remailer on line could be achieved by broadcasting a message through a newsgroup specifying the location and type of the remailer. If necessary, one or more pseudonymous automatic testing agents could pick up the message and put the remailer through a barrage of tests, broadcasting a "remailer certification" with a certain duration. "Premail++" and remailers could find their next hop by examining current certifications and choosing one with desired characteristics, scoring by trusted testing agents and other criteria (including the passage of time since the last certification). If an exit-remailer is chosen early in the game, multiple paths to the exit-remailer can be used to improve reliability (exit- remailers would also probably have a shorter cycle of certification).

I tried to discuss a very similar plan several months ago (maybe as long ago as a year, I don't remember). No one seemed interested in it. Many people seemed to think that a newsgroup for this sort of a thing was a waste of bandwith. I don't really agree, and think that the bandwith is neccesary for a distributed method of making the remailer net more robust to remailers popping into and out of existence. I still think it's a good idea though. shrug. maybe people will like it better this time around.