Forwarded message:

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 1997 18:27:10 -0400 From: ghio@temp0122.myriad.ml.org (Matthew Ghio) Subject: Re: Remailers and ecash (fwd)

Jim Choate wrote:

...

What besides raising hell anonymously, laundering money, and defeating merchant purchase traffic analysis are commercial anonymous remailers good for?

So what are remailers being used for?

We are talking commercial remailers here right? <see the quote you used above>. As famous as you are, you don't get to change the rules in the middle of the game.

1) Private communication in the form of anonymous message pools

You don't need anonymous remailers for this since simple crypto will provide just as good private communications security than anonymous remailers will because there is no central choke point where traffic analysis occurs . Now if one of the parties is actualy under surveillance then the anonymous remailers won't help because they will be tapping at the source, if anything it would provide further evidence of the parties complicity in a conspiracy. If you want your communications to stay private (if I understand your use of the word) use encryption and use underground remailers which isn't open to commercial exploitation, or else simply purchase a different account on your current ISP.

2) Test posts

Irrelevant, people don't pay for test posts enough to keep a commercial remailer in business - unless we vastly increase the total traffic level by quite a few orders of magnitude.

3) Discussion of Macintosh computers

irrelevant, people won't pay for this either.

4) Discussion of obscure religions

irrelevant (and I'm a Pantheist, they don't get more obscure than that) since people ain't gonna pay for this unless they are persecuted in their country of residence. If so the easiest thing to do would be to outlaw anonymous remailers (with the same logic they use to oppress the religion). [see #6 for more details on this]

5) Sharing erotic fantasy stories

And you suspect they will actualy pay for this? This line of reasoning I would love to hear more on...

6) Avoiding censorship in Singapore

Let's look at this a moment. I believe we can take as a given that Singapore is a oppressive regime. Furthermore all traffic in Singapore goes through government operated and regulated POP's. In that environment you really want to send traffic to an anonymous remailer? Can you say 'man-in-the-middle', and not only that but all the outgoing traffic from Singapore won't be through an anonymous remailers making it trivial for Singapore officials to determine exactly who to go hassle. So it is clear that the only parties discussing Singapore safely will be outside Singapore which makes the supposition that Singapore is going to come after you a bit suspect. You're talking about a country that outlaws private satellite dishes - get real. Furthermore commercial enterprises are open to much closer scrutiny in areas like Singapore making it even harder to stay in business unless the operator happens to be a government stooly, hardly the stuff of security. My thesis would be that any remailer (commercial or not) in a country with an oppresive regime is the last place you want to consider secure.

7) Avoiding censorship in Iran

See #6. Applies to China, Korea, Iraq, etc.

8) Discussion of remailers themselves

I would also like to see your explanation of exactly why they would pay for this.

9) Discussion of controvertial political topics (racism, guns, drugs)

The only reason that anonymous remailers are useful here is that the originating party doesn't want to deal with the results of being known. The flip side to this is that the reputation of anonymous discussions in these sorts of areas would have little political impact. A person who won't discuss such issues under their own name certainly won't go out and become actively involved in some political movement. Now if your claim is that such activity might hold some weight with an elected official I would appreciate an explanation as well - especialy considering that the anonymity provides just enough 'cover' so that the politician can safely ignore any and all traffic made through this mechanism, "They aren't one of my constituents." If you have some reasoning outside this please share it.

10) Discussion about a TV show

Irrelevant because people won't pay for this. Free remailers are useful for all sorts of mental masturbation, for actual business there doesn't seem to be a lot of uses. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage@ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|