For example, the Linux mavens could tell us if Linux-based remailer boxes could be hung on dedicated connections to The Little Garden network, as a specific example. A "black box remailer" such as several folks have suggested (Chaum (in 1981), me, Eric Hughes, others) might be buildable for under a grand. We could ask here for contributions, and might even raise this amount of money. Then each of us who contributed could have "accounts," maybe several of them. Imagine 100 or more "remailers" all on this one machine--I'm deliberately ignoring the security issue for now. Little Garden has stated categorically that they will not tell users what they can or can't do with their machines (though I can think of some cases where they might have to, as with spamming, etc.). Anyway, you can see where I'm headed.

The "Linux mavens" followed by the "black box" stuff sparked an idea... First, before delving into dreamland: I'm sure Linux could be hung off just about any store-and-forward (a la UUCP) or TCP/IP-based network there is with a minimum of trouble. Linux junkies are familiar with the concept of "distributions". For the uninitiated, Linux itself is just a kernel; Linus Torvalds doesn't hold anyone's hand when it comes to actually turning that kernel into a working system. As a result, people have done this job themselves: they build their own working systems painstakingly from scratch and then archive it off to disk or CD-ROM, which they sell or give away. Most of the time, when you get Linux, you're actually getting one of these "distributions" of Linux, complete with all the frills that don't come with the kernel (like the shell, basic utils, and so on). Now how 'bout this: Consider a new distribution of Linux, the "Cypherpunk" distribution (if ya don't like the name, make up yer own!). This would be a bare minimum of a distribution, with nothing fancy: bash, misc. utils like ls, etc. This can fit (tightly) in 20 MB. The supplied kernel would have every networking option under the sun turned on, but would be otherwise bare of frills as well. Now let's add minimal network utils (telnet and telnetd for connecting and sendmail for obvious reasons), perl, PGP, and a remailer package. To make it as easy as possible, I'd use the UMSDOS filesystem, so that Linux could be installed on a DOS machine without any reformatting, repartitioning, or similar headaches. We could make this available via FTP or press some CD-ROMs if we were ambitious. Better yet, the cool Linux thing to do now is to install via NFS; this makes installing Linux as easy as sticking in a boot disk and pointing the install program at the NFS server (well, not quite, but pretty close). After adding in the cute little install program (like the Slackware distribution already has) and some boot options, you'd have an "instant remailer" software package, able to transform any 386SX/4MB RAM DOS machine or better into a Linux-based remailer site, complete with aliases, logging policies, etc. already configured for you. I bet even Tim May could install this if it were done right. :-) So, am I dreaming, or does this sound viable to y'all?