remailer ideas & proposals

[skyhawk at cpac.washington.edu]

> From: ""L. Detweiler"" <ld231782 at longs.lance.colostate.edu> <ld231782/daemon>
> Subject: remailer ideas & proposals
> 
> Now, for some *really* radical ideas. If cypherpunk remailers were
> truly impervious to traffic analysis then we wouldn't *care* if
> detailed statistics on mail messages were broadcast to the world,
> because correlations would be intractable to determine so it wouldn't matter.
> So, I propose that remailers actually start posting to a list somewhere
> *all* internal traffic. [...]

That's a big if.  I think the idea is interesting, but would *very* much like
to see this tested first on a set of "play" remailers, which are advertised as
being for research only, don't trust them to actually work, etc.

> 2. Embedded messages
> 
> I've been thinking about the whole idea of message transmission in
> SMTP, and it strikes me as very sloppy. [...]
> Here is the idea: when a message is submitted to a host, the host is
> responsible for maintaining a very precise map of what the message
> appeared as when it went `in', and what was added in the process,
> `out'.  [...]
> Note: I don't know if the inherent `sloppiness' in SMTP will ever be
> successfully evaded given its widespread entrenchment. However, I
> believe protocols superior to it in that regard are inevitable in their
> adoption.

MIME, in particular, solves this problem, along with many others.  Three cheers
for Metamail!  Specifically, you can have several seperate messages within your
RFC822 message, arranged hierarchially.  You could have your public key, your
cute .sig, your message, your signature for the message, contact information
for you, a JPEG image (of your cat, say), and a sound ("meow") all in the same
mail message.  There is even faint hope that it would be portable.

--
Scott Northrop          <skyhawk at cpac.washington.edu>            (206)784-2083
ObVirus:   The demand for obedience is inherently evil.
ObVirus2:  As a juror in a Trial by Jury, you have the right, power and duty
           to acquit the defendant if you judge the law itself to be unjust.