Re: Remailers an unsolveable paradox?
We want to be able to provide the means for whistleblowers and others to communicate in a secure and anonymous fashion. Yet we need to make sure we're not abused too much since sooner or later laws will catch up with the remailers should abuse sky-rocket.
The ratio of remailer use to abuse is painfully low because there's no way to actually communicate. You can broadcast but not recieve, because no system exists to receive mail psuedononymously. This is not communication. Remailer use is restricted to when senders don't care about listenerssss, which means rants, death threats, and the abuse of spam. The only systems for receiving mail are at best some college student's unimplemented thesis. Let's take our shining example of truth and freedom, the whistle-blower. When they send out mail to the media or whomever, one of two things happens: they see the story published or they don't. If not, there's no idea why: was it received? Did the media want more information? Did they need more support? Do they want to verify it? Do they want to help the whistle-blower? Even if the story is published, whistle-blowing is kneecapped: it can't be supported, or expanded on, or debated in any but the most rudimentary fashion. It doesn't matter if remailers disappear, they've already failed.
On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 09:50:14PM +0200, Nomen Nescio wrote:
Let's take our shining example of truth and freedom, the whistle-blower. When they send out mail to the media or whomever, one of two things happens: they see the story published or they don't. If not, there's no idea why: was it received? Did the media want more information? Did they need more support? Do they want to verify it? Do they want to help the whistle-blower? Even if the story is published, whistle-blowing is kneecapped: it can't be supported, or expanded on, or debated in any but the most rudimentary fashion.
It's easy. The whistleblower says: if you want more info, post your questions encrypted with this PGP key I just generated to alt.test.messages with a subject that contains "Fluffy Bunnies", and I will reply to you. Of course they'll want to trash that key pretty quickly afterward, since it's "proof" that they where the whistleblower. Obviously that is more technical that many journalists could handle, but nothing saying it can't be largely automated with a web frontend stuck on it. And don't most/all remailers support responder blocks? -Jack
-- On 4 Sep 2004 at 21:50, Nomen Nescio wrote:
The ratio of remailer use to abuse is painfully low because there's no way to actually communicate. You can broadcast but not recieve, because no system exists to receive mail psuedononymously. This is not communication.
Remailer use is restricted to when senders don't care about listenerssss, which means rants, death threats, and the abuse of spam. The only systems for receiving mail are at best some college student's unimplemented thesis.
alt.anonymous.messages provides a channel for people who wish to receive messages without themselves being identified. If I want to receive a message without providing and email address that can be traced, I ask the recipient to post in in the newsgroups such as alt.anonymous.messages. For obvious reasons people who read alt.anonymous.messages, or think they might need to read it in the future, download the newsgroup in its entireity. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG fzparMQ1YGMHFGGQ4eabvrdbfX3oQPnGSeUNNkuX 4UV3sPQUJdBwqav34D5pBXRBNtLg+GX5dxE+YM5P8
participants (3)
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Jack Lloyd
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James A. Donald
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Nomen Nescio