Hal: I agree that it is to our advantage to minimize the cooperation between remailers, for the following reasons: 1) The existance of a cabal dominating such a function admits the posibility of the abuse of power, for whatever reason. 2) The requirement of cooperation between remailers limits the size of the remailer net to the number of operators that can effectively cooperate with each other. (Yes, we can extend via overlapping groups, but this introduces chokepoints--another weakness.) 3) The requirement of cooperation between remailers raises the cost (in time and legal vulnerabilities) to enter the remailer net. 4) Failing all of these, there is a real chance (happening even now) that users will trust the operators too much. But there is a major difference between active cooperation and agreeing to a standard. Active cooperation is just that--something which cannot be automated, or which involves automated judgement decisions. I claim that my ideas are merely standards. A standard which might even be extendable into the dominions of a hostile government. Nathan
Nathan Zook wrote:
But there is a major difference between active cooperation and agreeing to a standard. Active cooperation is just that--something which cannot be automated, or which involves automated judgement decisions. I claim that my ideas are merely standards. A standard which might even be extendable into the dominions of a hostile government.
Yes! Standards are not collusion. In fact, standards can lessen the amount of ad hoc contact needed between remailer operators, and thus reduce somewhat the prospects for compromise and collusion. Robust standards are also helpful for building "hands-off" remailers, in which remailer account owners take a hands-off approach, possibly even to the point of creating the accounts and then never checking again. The proposals I've made, sometimes called a "Remailer's Guild," were not for a cabal, but for a market standard that would tend to reward those who follow certain standards and punish (all in a market sense) those who flout standards just for the sake of being different. (The real idea was to get some progress on deciding on some features and terminology, to the point that a "Release" version could be produced, like PGP 2.6, for example.) It may be that such convergence on standards can be done without any contact at all, just through market forces and things like pinging scripts. The remailer analog of a self-healing network, rerouting around brain-damaged sites. --Tim May, posting at 3:55 a.m. because this is my jet lag rebound period, in which I can't go to sleep because I slept for 11 hours upon my arrival at home -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero | 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. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay
On Mon, 6 Feb 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:
Yes! Standards are not collusion. In fact, standards can lessen the amount of ad hoc contact needed between remailer operators, and thus reduce somewhat the prospects for compromise and collusion.
If someone adds the secure coin-flip exchange between chain neighbors to my Dining Cryptographers IRC client, all remailer operators can go on IRC and anonymously discuss the standards so that no cabals can form ;) -Thomas
participants (3)
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Nathan Zook -
tcmay＠netcom.com -
Thomas Grant Edwards