Ken Williams writes:

I came across a funny article about a "CIA, DEA, FBI, Lucent Technologies, Replay.com, Seed-bank.com Grand Conspiracy" at http://members.tripod.com/~spookbusters/sunnysnooping.htm

This is a critique of an article describing a way to do anonymous email and how to use remailers. The original article proposed using the Lucent privacy proxy at www.lpwa.com as an intermediary to a free email server like hotmail. The critique got all hot and bothered over the fact that Lucent is a government contractor and so the original post must have been a plant by the FBI. In fact, the LPWA-Hotmail technique is suitable for moderately secure anonymity but not for lawbreaking. This poster has used the technique occasionally for over a year. It is certainly better than hotmail alone, since hotmail includes the originating IP address in its outgoing email. By using LPWA, the originating IP field holds the LPWA IP address, and the actual originating IP address is not revealed. However, as LPWA clearly states in their privacy policy (http://lpwa.com:8000/policy.html), they keep logs of connections, and will make those available to law enforcement if presented with a court order. This would make it possible to track down the originating IP which sent the mail. Despite its limitations, this technique has the advantages of ease of use and moderate security. All you have to do is to set the lpwa.com proxy in your browser, and use hotmail for email. You can both send and receive email, which is hard to do with any other technique. It is comparable in security and convenience to the late anon.penet.fi server, which did much to increase awareness of anonymity technologies on the net. (The original article was titled "Quick and Dirty Anonymity", which seems an accurate enough description.)