Idea for a Minor New Remailer Feature: Dead Drop Aliases

[Timothy C. May]

Istvan Oszaraz von Keszi writes:

> My question is what is necessary, to create an address for the
> remailer?  I'd like it addressed as something other than my
> personal account.  Do I contact my sysadmins for a new address,
> or is this something which is user configurable.
> 


This reminds me of an idea: why not create "symbolic links" between
pseudonyms chosen by the remailer operators and their actual physical
sites?

The idea is this: fred at uptight.org wants to run a remailer, but he
doesn't want his managers at "uptight.org" to know he's advertising
this service (e.g., by postings in a public place, by the finger of
remailer at soda.berkeley.edu, etc.).

He wants a "dead drop" to forward to him mail intended to be remailed.

What he wants is an alias at another site, run probably by a
sympathetic Cypherpunks who has more control over his own site. So,
joe at uptight.org arranges with eric at freedom.org to establish this
alias.

(eric at freedom.org knows what's going on....the only security is that
based on the trust between eric and joe.)

I know, I know, this is "security through obscurity." (In a sense.)
And eric at freedom.org might _just as well_ run the second or third or
nth remailer _himself_.

But the advantage of there being _many_ physical people acting as
remailers is still there. And it encourages people who might shy away
from running a remailer to do so.

The overall security is at least not any lower than if joe at uptight.org
got the remailer traffic directly.

There are other wrinkles. I can give more of my thoughts if there's
any interest.

Not to volunteer anybody's copious spare time, but I have a hunch a
Perl program could implement this automatic reflector easily. Maybe
some mailers can already handle this (I don't see any commands in elm,
my mailer, that can do selective bouncing/forwarding....kind of like a
kill file, except the targetted address gets forwarded.)

Any thoughts?

--Tim May


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