agree with all of BS's points...

Anonymous remailers support several things I want to do, and that I want other people be able to do: 1) Let people have private conversations without being identified by third parties. 2) Let people have private conversations without being identified by each other, voluntarily and respecting each others' rights. 3) Let people broadcast things to the public that they might be afraid to do otherwise. 4) Let people broadcast things to the public without their reputations, good or bad, affecting readers' reactions. 5) Let people experiment with different personality and conversation styles, though this doesn't strictly require anonymity. 6) Let people communicate with government officials without risk.

I suspect all these items can be accomplished using means other than anonymous remailers. anonymous remailers are a good start, but possibly there is still technology waiting to be invented to support some of these features. one possibility that I'm very interested in: consider that Usenet was not built from the ground-up to support anonymity, nor was the sendmail system. when anonymity was introduced to Usenet, everyone went crazy, and it was only marginally supported. I think I may work on some technical proposals along these lines for future posting here, because much of this dialogue has me thinking. what cpunks might consider doing is creating an alternative message distribution system like Usenet that starts from the premise that anonymous communication is allowed and trying to grow it. btw, McCullagh's and other's claims about "ghettoization" of anonymity strike me as very specious. as long as people can use anonymity in some forum they want, I think that's acceptable. what's the equivalent of a "ghetto" in cyberspace? you can't go into a meeting of professionals wearing a ski mask, although you might be able to create such a forum yourself. does that mean you are in some kind of a "ghetto"? oh, brother.