-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 anonymous wrote:

Proposing that the remailer network would benefit more from 10 reliable, properly configured and legally secure remailers than 50 "mosquito remailers" is a pure statement of fact. Mix-nets need stable nodes. You're welcome to design a different system that allows anonymous messages to be transmitted through short-lived temporary nodes, but I doubt it will be anything like what we're using now.

But how confident are you in the robustness and integrity of the system as it exists today? If it were a matter of life or death (and you knew your adversaries were more familiar with the intimate details of the system than you are) would you trust it to come through for you? Can't say that I would. I still think some sort of decentralized P2P short-lived mosquito remailer system would circumvent the most serious Mixnet pitfalls: if anyone ever gets one off the ground, it would be a great, great thing.

The best way to ensure the mix-net is going to protect you is for you to run a remailer. (Better yet, write your own remailer software).

Nice thought, but it's probably a safe bet that a real pro could pick a hole in anything I come up with straight off the bat-- especially if I had used a compromised compiler. How much thought are people putting into that one? Sounds to me like another fantastic place for the government to place "trusted insiders".

The remailer network should never become an "old boy's club." Anyone with the ability to maintain a stable remailer must be permitted to join.

Good point, but isn't there a fair amount of danger in a network of a bunch of well-intentioned, otherwise intelligent people setting up nodes while relying on "out of the box" instructions? It's a terrible way to configure your own operating system, much less becoming part of a network people are potentially trusting their lives to.

Government involvement isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd happily include both a remailer run by Hamas and a remailer run my the Mossad in my remailer chains.

Who knows, maybe we already do: anything worth getting nervous about is probably totally "unmarked" as being connected to an agency anyway. ~Faustine. *** He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. - --Thomas Paine -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPsdk version 1.7.1 (C) 1997-1999 Network Associates, Inc. and its affiliated companies. (Diffie-Helman/DSS-only version) iQA/AwUBPCPWbvg5Tuca7bfvEQJeDQCeMz0P2HOWB/HR0pgikHgPjPbfQC0AmgM4 4T4psPik7xm4Hdt4s3QT/2ct =9JP6 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----