Mulling over K. Goen's somewhat rambling, irate, and paranoid prose (but nevertheless mildly entertaining) has caused various random ideas to pop into my head on how to get pseudonymity/anonymity into the mainstream and even the spotlight, toward the goal of widespread public recognition, acceptance, and use to the point of dependence, all in a nonthreatening way. First of all, there have been a lot of famous uses of anonymity and pseudonymity, esp. in literature. It might be interesting for PR purposes to collect a long list of everyone who has used aliases. When people start saying `wow, he's my favorite author, I didn't know he was someone else' that would be great. A sort of long history of anonymity and pseudonymity would be perfect. Deep Throat, Voltaire, Mark Twain, I think even Scott Fitzgerald was a pseudonym. Also, what about anonymous letters? Did Martin Luther first post the `indulgence complaints' anonymously? I'm sure there's some cases where anonymous information changed the course of world history significantly (esp. during wars). Anonymous tips leading to big busts, that kind of thing. (Remember the Lockerbie plane terrorist crash? There was an anonymous tip to authorities that virtually pinpointed the flight origination and bomb mechanism.) Anybody know any, please send them to me, and I'll summarize to the group and credit you. (please give references where possible.) If it works out I'll donate it to K. Goen, assuming he hasn't been arrested or hospitalized by then :) Next idea: How about a newsgroup devoted to `whistleblowing' where anonymity is encouraged? It could even be `anonymously moderated' where all the postings are guaranteed to go through an anonymous server before posting. (Whoever wanted to be *really* sure could anonymize the message before posting.) I haven't seen *any* newsgroups dedicated to looking at government abuses from the "inside" (this would be for employees esp.) I can imagine all kinds of neat little secrets about our government's illustrious practices leaking out.. The potential for `good' is good, esp. if the notices refer to ways of *saving money* and *eliminating waste*. A sort of patriotic taxpayer watchdog group! Although the possibility for `bad' is good too, people might just use it as a way of getting revenge. (Despite what others may think here, I hope it wouldn't turn into a sort of perpetual incitement to revolution and anarchy...) The group might overlap into private industry too, although the federal government assuredly provides the most fodder... Now, think about how much immense *press* and *publicity* that some government abuses get. They can really be legendary (remember the $600 toilet seats?). Now, suppose that just coincidentally a major press story that got out *originated* in this anonymous group. Wow! That would be a story in itself, worthy of the evening news. Can't you imagine some blank-faced, clueless reporter saying ``the story was first reported on a network bulletin board devoted to anonymous reporting of government abuses.'' Allright! Hey, it could get to the point where reporters start watching it for hot tips! There are already a lot of big Washington groups that try to monitor the government, and this could be a real catalyst for them. So I'm putting out the idea. Maybe someone well-versed in the newsgroup addition protocol can take care of the details. (Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seat belts, I think we're in for some hellacious turbulence ahead...)
The moderator to alt.whistleblower, instead of a person's mail address, could be a mail alias which invokes a header field stripper. That way it would be impossible to post to the group with your identity in the header. Every posting anonymous! Sort of like a mathematical dual of alt.forgery. I would also suggest a periodic posting explaining exactly how secure that is. (Proof against casual attack, but not against local or global network monitoring.) It seems easy enough. I'd do it myself if I had root anywhere. The perl scripts for remailing would be easily hacked. You could even retain the automatic PGP decryption for the more informed, the more paranoid. Eric
The moderator to alt.whistleblower, instead of a person's mail address, could be a mail alias which invokes a header field stripper. That way it would be impossible to post to the group with your identity in the header. Every posting anonymous! Sort of like a mathematical dual of alt.forgery.
I would also suggest a periodic posting explaining exactly how secure that is. (Proof against casual attack, but not against local or global network monitoring.)
It seems easy enough. I'd do it myself if I had root anywhere. The perl scripts for remailing would be easily hacked. You could even retain the automatic PGP decryption for the more informed, the more paranoid.
Well, I hereby volunteer anon.penet.fi for such use. I already have the posting stuff in place, and .fi is outside US jurisdiction.... It would be a one-line hack to disable the anon id generation for posters to that group... So the security concerns re anon.penet.fi mentioned on this list wouldn't apply... Now I only have to get PGP up on the damned Interactive UNIX... Or switch to bsd/386 or something... Julf (admin@anon.penet.fi)
participants (3)
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Eric Hughes
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Johan Helsingius
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ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu