(Cypherpunks remailers may want to change the "Nobody" and "Anonymous" tags to names that are less screenable, less susceptible to censorship by ARMM-type programs. Using a rotating list of fictional or historical names may be an approach, but I'm sure we can think of many ways to bypass ARMM-type cancellers.)

I'm not sure I like this idea. In my own discussions with people on this issue, I've found that "filterability" (for lack of a better term) overcomes *many* (if not all) of the standard objections to anonymous email. I see email anonymity as directly analogous to Caller-ID in the telephone network. Historically, telephony and email have taken competely opposite tacks on the caller privacy issue: telephone calls have always been anonymous while the Internet has effectively had "Caller ID" with no blocking. Caller ID changes the former assumption, while the anonymous remailer changes the latter. A consensus seems to be emerging on Caller ID: it's a good thing, *provided* there's a way to block it. In other words, the calling and called parties must agree on whether or not the caller will identify himself. If they don't agree, the call won't go through. Because the Caller ID messages explicitly state when the caller's number is blocked (as opposed to simply being unavailable for other reasons), it would be straightforward to build a call filter box that would disable your ringer and return an error message to any caller that invokes caller ID blocking. ("I'm sorry, the number you have reached will not accept anonymous calls. If you wish to reach this party, please unblock caller ID and try your call again.") I think this approach strikes an eminently reasonable balance between the privacy interests of the two parties. Personally, I would not use such a box unless I was actually having problems with anonymous crank calls. But a single woman living alone might well feel differently. The important thing is to let each individual make that decision for him/herself, not to impose one policy on the entire world. I think this is also exactly the right solution for email. The policy for the Internet should be that anonymous email is perfectly okay as long as it is clearly labeled as such. Then anyone who doesn't want to receive it can automatically remove it from their incoming mail without ever having to set eyes on it. This allows anonymous email to flourish wherever the recipients consent to receiving it, while it could not be used (for very long, anyway) to harass a nonconsenting recipient. More elaborate filters could be constructed that would accept anonymous email only when it had been signed by certain specific RSA keys. This would let consenting parties communicate by means of pseudonyms, without having to open themselves up to anonymous harassment from the entire net. What do you think? Phil