From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@athena.mit.edu>

From: Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>

...

There doesn't seem to be a lot of realism in these discussions, which is really bothering me.

What you believe to be real and what I believe to be real may be different. To claim that another is being unrealistic is to mask what is foremost a difference in belief.

What assumptions here do you disagree with? If you are explicit, perhaps we can forge an agreement.

Well, let's see.... the most recent assumption I disagreed with was the claim that we could implement full-fledged postive reputation filters, complete with the use of RSA, and deploy it on the Usenet in some sort of time-frame less than ten years out --- and even that is doubtful.

Oh, come ON. This is insane, Ted, and you know it. Project Athena didn't take ten years. RSAREF is out there -- someone could build a version of news that used public key for verifying moderation on newsgroups and control messages within a month if they felt like it -- and working part time, too. As for the rest, well, it shouldn't be too hard. For unmoderated lists, keep sets of users you want to read the messages of and verify signatures if forgery starts becoming a problem. Crude but it would work.

Look at how many sites are running B News, long after C news has been out. Anonymous remailers are here *today*.

Well, the folks running B News and C News will have to live without the public key extensions, and it will be their fault. The people with the public key extensions will have the benefits. Is it your argument that because some men are fools all must suffer, Ted? Lets say that tommorrow someone made available, for free, pills that cured all disease. Are we to say "no, thats bad, some idiots won't take them?"

Then there's assumption that anonymous ID's would automatically have no weight --- they may have very little weight, but even today, they probably have some weight. I could probably construct some sort of NSA conspiracy theory, and have it posted so it looked like it came from 20 different pseudonyms, and it probably would be believed by a lot of people.

Yeah, well, so what? Right now people post such things non-anonymously, or could forge such postings. People put out infinte supplies of garbage. I'd argue that the average church causes more damage than all the anonymous posters on Usenet ever could and those are perfectly legal. You aren't arguing for non-anonymity. You are arguing that free speech is bad. Well, fine. See if you can stop it, Ted -- the rest of us aren't playing along with that game. Given that you have no choice but to accept reality, why not quit bitching and just work on fixing the problem? The Extropians list works on a closed subscription system today, folks. Its crude -- no public keys involved, subscription checking done very ad hoc -- but it works. People ARE out there fixing these problems. If someone really thinks anonymity is going to be a problem, they can fix it, and it won't take ten years -- a couple of months of evenings would likely allow for overkill.

Fundamentally, however, there's the basic assumption that anarchy per se is good; which is a basic philosophical belief which I just plain disagree with.

That isn't even an issue here, Ted. Anonymity exists whether we want it or not -- its like asking if gravity is a good idea. The anarchy issue is not part of this. Even you would have to recognise that its impossible even with a society as closed as the Soviet Union to stop anonymity, let alone in a society as free as ours. The choices are to live with it and find ways to cope or to try for draconian measures. One is practical -- the other is impractical and harmful in and of itself. Perry