Re: Anonymizer employees need killing
I hope at this point the retractions by the Register have been well circulated. Just to make it absolutely clear, we have never and never will sell out a customer. This is simply shoddy reporting at its worst. A blog first reported this months ago as "an anonymizer" which was then picked up as "The Anonymizer" in some articles, which then printed corrections. In fact the company involved was Surfola which is not connected to us in any way shape or form (and which I had never even heard of before this). Months later the Register picked up on an old uncorrected version of the story and printed it without any fact checking at all. This is a shocking breach of editorial responsibility. I would have hoped that my years of working on free open source privacy tools (such as Mixmaster) before founding Anonymizer would lend my reputation some weight, or at least give me the benefit of the doubt until the matter was clarified. I am deeply troubled to see death threats against my employees (and I would assume myself) without anyone taking the trouble to even ask us to comment. It has always been easy to contact me directly, next time I hope someone will do so before assuming the worst. -Lance ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------- Lance M. Cottrell President, Anonymizer Inc.
On Mar 27, 2004, at 23:13, Lance Cottrell wrote:
I hope at this point the retractions by the Register have been well circulated. Just to make it absolutely clear, we have never and never will sell out a customer. This is simply shoddy reporting at its worst.
<snip>
I would have hoped that my years of working on free open source privacy tools (such as Mixmaster) before founding Anonymizer would lend my reputation some weight, or at least give me the benefit of the doubt until the matter was clarified. I am deeply troubled to see death threats against my employees (and I would assume myself) without anyone taking the trouble to even ask us to comment.
It has always been easy to contact me directly, next time I hope someone will do so before assuming the worst.
Alright then, since you're here, maybe you could answer a couple questions: - If given a court order, would you be able to provide the FBI the same kind of information that Surfola did, which could be used to track down the customer in meatspace? (From the article, we can assume it was his paypal email addx and/or the IP addx he was using, either one of which was probably sufficient). - Assuming the answer is yes: from the customer's POV, in the end what does it matter whether you were given a court order or not... the result was the same, they were caught because they trusted your service (the fact that, in this case, the crime was despicable, is beside the point). - Can you explain the contradictions inherent in the following excerpts from your user agreement? "Usage logs are usually kept for forty-eight (48) hours for maintenance purposes, monitoring Spamming and monitoring abuses of netiquette. Any relevant portion(s) of such logs may be kept for as long as needed to stop the abuses." "We maintain no information which would identify which user had sent a given message or visited a given site" "Abusers of the Anonymizer can expect no anonymity. We regret the necessity of this policy, but without it abuse will force the shutdown of the Anonymizer." Even if we leave aside the question of whether one should trust a service which /could/ betray you if it were run by an untrustworthy operator, you state openly in your policy that you're not to be trusted! --bgt
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 1:01 AM -0600 3/28/04, bgt wrote:
you state openly in your policy that you're not to be trusted!
Think about it for a second. Anonymizer is set up to prevent *businesses*, stalkers, and small-time crooks like spammers, from seeing your behavior on the net and annoying you there. What's he going to do when uncle Fed shows up with guns? Have a shootout or something? :-) The point to cypherpunks as always been this, folks: Do not rely on *people*, especially people and *laws*, to protect your anonymity from, if you will, national technical means -- guys with guns and rubber hoses. That's what remailers are for, speaking of Lance, the guy who wrote Mixmaster. *Use* them. Build them. Make 'em better. And, if you're upset that you can't *surf* anonymously, sure as hell don't blame Lance. Blame the state of *markets* for such onion-routing services as Zero Knowledge's Freedom, or, even, the lack of interest in the open source community to build an equivalent. Meaning *buy* stuff when it comes on the market, and *use* someone's code when it shows up on sourceforge, or wherever, report bugs, and help *out*, instead of pissing and moaning that a single-hop anonymity service doesn't provide perfect anonymity against national technical means. More important, if you, personally, can do something about it, write code. If not, *hire* someone to write code. And, if you can't do *that*, then quit whining at the people who are actually *doing* something, anything, however small it is, in the right direction. Like Lance. Especially Lance. Certainly, if something you do pisses off the Uncle Fed, he's got the muscle to kick your ass. Live with it. Work around it. Use what's there to keep from getting your ass kicked. Progress is about doing something that hasn't been done before so that you have the *freedom* to do what you want. For example, Julf provided a single-stop remailer with penet. Some "church" subpoenaed him out of business. Fine. Do something else. Just don't sit there and whine about it. These days, there are *more* and better remailers out there (thanks to people like Lance) than a single hop one in Finland. Could it be better? Sure. So make it better instead of whining about it. And, finally, one last thing. After 5 or 6 years of it from Tim, who started this list, and the original physical meetings, it's no secret I've gotten really tired of the "need killing" chest-puffing bullshit. Tim was bad enough, but, at least -- and in ever-decreasing usefulness -- he had something substantive to say. Self-reference is a bitch, :-), but people who say other people "need killing" need killing themselves, and, frankly, deserve everything they get for saying so in otherwise civil discourse. Unpopular opinion is one thing, but bad manners is a mortal offense in my opinion. :-). So, try to act like adults, people. Not like a bunch of 12 year old boys who just found a loaded BAR in the garage. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQGbpFMPxH8jf3ohaEQI2tQCg6ruUCCQ/q15O9Ps75ldDTB9tTWgAn1DD TmCabJz2jSjv7noQeaT0Ncb+ =mX/0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
On Mar 28, 2004, at 9:05, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
Anonymizer is set up to prevent *businesses*, stalkers, and small-time crooks like spammers, from seeing your behavior on the net and annoying you there.
What's he going to do when uncle Fed shows up with guns? Have a shootout or something?
This is exactly my point. You and I are saying essentially the same things. Anonymizer cannot be trusted with your life & liberty. It is the equivalent of "kid sister cryptography". Lance, however, does not seem to view it this way.
And, if you're upset that you can't *surf* anonymously, sure as hell don't blame Lance.
What I'm blaming Lance for is snake-oil marketing. When someone posted "Anonymizer revealed the identity of a customer to the FBI", Lance posted "Anonymizer would never do such a thing". But *of course* he would, because there's a metaphorical (if not real) gun pointed at his head. I'm not "pissing and moaning that a single-hop anonymity service doesn't provide perfect anonymity", I'm calling Lance and Anonymizer on their false claims. Lance and Anonymizer should both be upfront and honest about exactly what level of "anonymity" Anonymizer /can/ provide. Then I would not have anything to say on this thread. I agree, the service is certainly useful for some things, and the world is better with it than without it.
And, finally, one last thing. After 5 or 6 years of it from Tim, who started this list, and the original physical meetings, it's no secret I've gotten really tired of the "need killing" chest-puffing
*I* did not say anyone needed killing, so I'm assuming this part of your rant was targeted at someone else. --bgt
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 1:53 PM -0600 3/28/04, bgt wrote:
What I'm blaming Lance for is snake-oil marketing.
Don't be a putz. He's marketing it for what it is. Lance has never made any claims of perfect anonymity.
And, finally, one last thing. After 5 or 6 years of it from Tim, who started this list, and the original physical meetings, it's no secret I've gotten really tired of the "need killing" chest-puffing
*I* did not say anyone needed killing,
No, I was talking about the original post in this thread, and its resultant title. After watching you blather on, here, though, I'm beginning to regret what *I* said on the matter. :-). In the meantime, try to pry your panties out of the crack in your ass. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQGdc68PxH8jf3ohaEQIwsgCeISV5A+amlSjXGtkAtpFN3Uei3zIAoJj0 YKsGDGoO3pX9qPAjHR/qtprk =TmHg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
participants (3)
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bgt -
Lance Cottrell -
R. A. Hettinga