Anonymous Remailers
Yes, those of us who run remailers sometimes run them from university accounts. Such was my case. The university of washington (without knowing it :) supported remailing at one time, through phantom@mead.u.washington.edu. I am not root here (and never will be!), and such access is not needed to set up a remailer. Instead, Hal Finney has written up a few remailer scripts which depend only on your ability to create a .forward file, and have perl available. (oh, also about.. ~1Mb for all of the scripts + PGP + keyring). There were no problems with my remailer and it was well-used. No scripts of incoming or outgoing mail were kept. The remailer lived for a few months last year, which actually isn't bad when you consider it was based on a student account with a nazi-like administration. :) The death-blow was a remailer target complaining to me about someone sending unsolicited mail to them through my remailer. Instead of replying to my account (phantom@mead), they saw that the header had "nobody@mead" on it, and when mail to that address bounced, they sent to postmaster. The mail to the postmaster was very polite and simply asked that the mail cease, either by taking away the remailing ability from the perpetrator or blocking the destination address. Of course, the postmaster didn't know anything about this, and when he looked into it, he was quite suprised. I was able to keep it limping for about another week. I got support from a few cypherpunks around here, people on the list like JDraper, TMay, etc., and from others including Whit Diffie, Neal Koblitz, etc. I might have been able to fight the shutdown, but I saw it as a losing battle. In any case, no, it takes no special abilities to run a remailer; everything is pretty much packaged for ease-of-use. Every administration is going to act differently if/when/how they find out about it. Make your own judgement, I suppose. mt Matt Thomlinson Say no to the Wiretap Chip! University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Internet: phantom@u.washington.edu phone: (206) 548-9804 PGP 2.2 key available via email or finger phantom@hardy.u.washington.edu
Matt Thomlinson writes:
Yes, those of us who run remailers sometimes run them from university accounts. Such was my case.
Matt Thomlinson was/is one of the True Pioneers of Cypherpunkdom, and I would give him a "Cypherpunk of the Whatever Award," were such things not in bad taste (pace Detweiler!) and also beyond my prerogative to give.
The death-blow was a remailer target complaining to me about someone sending unsolicited mail to them through my remailer. Instead of replying ... I was able to keep it limping for about another week. I got support from a few cypherpunks around here, people on the list like JDraper, TMay, etc., and from others including Whit Diffie, Neal Koblitz, etc.
I might have been able to fight the shutdown, but I saw it as a losing battle.
Which points to yet another feature needed in the The Next Generation Remailer: a bulletproof site! I don't think I emphasized this enough in my list of desirable features. Having offshore (out of the U.S.) sites is nice, but having sites resistant to pressures from universities and corporate site administrators is of even greater practical consequence. The commercial providers, like Netcom, Portal, and Panix, cannot be counted on to stand and fight should pressures mount (this is just my guess, not an aspersion against their backbones, whether organic or Internet). Standalone boxes with their own domain names, like the "ah.com" of Hughes and Abraham, or the "io.com" of the Austin folks, would seem to be the way to go. How we could or should use these boxes, how to recompense them for the traffic and (potential) hassle, are issues for us to talk about. In any case, in a few years I expect we'll see thousands of such sites, and fraidy-cat sysadmins will be a thing of the past. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power:2**859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Timothy C. May spake:
The commercial providers, like Netcom, Portal, and Panix, cannot be counted on to stand and fight should pressures mount (this is just my guess, not an aspersion against their backbones, whether organic or Internet).
Fall/Winter '94. (Maybe spring?) A cypherpunk-oriented (as well as other orientations) public access net site. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLUyBhXi7eNFdXppdAQGshAQAjB7c9gA0neT/zAw/9DIj8DgQ80VyAoYY eHcVczYZq9O25tvTNsuN7janT09GuEDeVFYnKKGeevdlAeG4r5cjKNrF5GCH8qFi xMkTn60F8a5n4kNcfly8owCJwki6NCbJlZxjh7KLqXW2tt2O9a4JhMEkZBYYd6yU zIwtQmElAec= =dKTN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Matt Thomlinson spake:
In any case, no, it takes no special abilities to run a remailer; everything is pretty much packaged for ease-of-use. Every administration is going to act differently if/when/how they find out about it. Make your own judgement, I suppose.
I have written something which installs a remailer in your account. It's sorta version 0.9alpha, so I don't want to release it on an ftp site. If you want it though, mail me. I make no guarantees. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLUx5T3i7eNFdXppdAQFzuwP/cotIlgw7C9fm4gdbpju/RzF7/UjtWLv5 o0VL1pGrrshqmQX7Nk5MRYU9LW6ElxVbWBrUjHxnd4qvWOL795OpJfX+mwcv7IQg sJksPzPsTbHTVqvtVfIYW5ShsY1o83zqQqYRpPGGedAoNdGFF1Q+m5a+MgQ3lr5r ygJI4xRCi44= =GVa/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (3)
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Matt Thomlinson -
Sameer -
tcmay＠netcom.com