Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers
From: owen@autodesk.com (D. Owen Rowley)
There is another level of *menace* which I suppose many of you are unaware. [...] I mean people who exploit insecure sites and networking skill to forge mail and articles as part of a concerted and ongoing campaign of ????????????????????? harrasement. Stuff that has resulted in very serious consequences. ?????????????????????????
Theres no need to go into detail here about the array of tactics and the widening scope of the phenomenon, but I think it needs to be looked at as an example of how and why systems are abused.
On the contrary, let's hear the details. If what we are considering here is how to fight abuse while encouraging (what we think is) positive use of anonymous systems, then we need to know the details. If you are not comfortable posting that here, I'd welcome a private email (as well as the people at io.com would, I expect). Still, I don't think cypherpunks is anywhere close to the stage where we should withold that kind of detail (except for OS bugs that go to CERT first)...
soc.motss and other newsgroups have seen a long list of pseudo-persons posting from non existent sites, and yes.. penet has been used to this effect.
ok, and anonymous remailers don't change that possibility one way or the other. I'll go hang out there for a while anyway...
I think that the design of privacy systems needs to take these dark-side issues seriously and do their best to minimise the potential for abuse.
Sure, but consider that extremist systems will exist nonetheless.
Perhaps a *zoning* concept is needed, in such that transactions would have qualifying conditions - or in such that *zones* exist as data-space with authentication qualifications for *entry* or transaction.
Who qualifies whom, based on what info, and to eliminate whom? Pierre pierre@shell.portal.com
Owen wrote:
Perhaps a *zoning* concept is needed, in such that transactions would have qualifying conditions - or in such that *zones* exist as data-space with authentication qualifications for *entry* or transaction.
Pierre wrote:
Who qualifies whom, based on what info, and to eliminate whom?
I don't think that Owen (and certainly not any party to the argument at io.com) is suggesting a high-handed Big Brother approach to qualifying transactions. At least I hope not... However, I think that as the means of defining data spaces (whether in Usenet space, mailing list space, or IRC space) become more sophisticated and also more accessible, that the people who establish these spaces will want to also establish authentication qualifications. And whether this will be a Good Thing or a Bad Thing depends on whether it's based on reputation or on knee-jerk anti-anonymity bigotry. Individuals or groups that wish to create a data space, or who currently conduct transactions in a data space, *should* have the right to establish rules for entry and transaction ranging from "anything goes" to "established members of the foo-ology research community using digital signatures." I think that the best remedy for the tyranny and stagnation that can arise from this is to keep a very low barrier to entry for the creation of new data spaces. Despite this, I think that discrimination solely on the basis on anonymity is *dead wrong* and is on equivalent moral ground with discrimination on the basis of skin color, religion or unnatural fondness for aquatic mammals. I think it is much more useful to put the new anonymous entity on the same ground as, say, a first semester college freshman, and allow that entity meaningful channels for acquiring reputation, up to and including becoming an "established member of the foo-ology research community." Doug Barnes Founder of foo-ology and the 'foo' mailing list To subscribe, send e-mail to: foo-request@indial1.io.com -- ---------------- /\ Douglas Barnes cman@illuminati.io.com / \ Chief Wizard (512) 448-8950 (d), 447-7866 (v) / () \ Illuminati Online metaverse.io.com 7777 /______\
participants (2)
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cman＠IO.COM -
pierre＠shell.portal.com