Responding to Exon -- technology is not enough

[Jason Burrell]

[This document was Exonized at The Exon-Hyde Center for Thought Cleansing.]

On Wed, 6 Dec 1995, Bill Humphries wrote:

> Fine for the tiny subset of Net users who understand crypto enough to use
> it on a daily basis. I'm not one of people either. This crypto isn't user
> friendly stuff. Before you propose such as solution, better make sure
> people can use this stuff.

You're right here, definately. While I'm not volunteering, I think
something could be written, such as an encrypted UUCP transfer system, and
a better premail. 

PGP is reasonably user friendly, if you have any kind of memory at all. It
isn't, of course, user friendly if you have to save your message to a
file, shell, encrypt it, exit the shell, load it back in, and send it. I
think that there is the major problem with PGP. I *know* that kind of
thing is a problem with chaining anon mailers, unless you have installed
an application such as Premail. 

I think that we'll eventually see applications such as Eudora pop up with 
PGP support, directly or indirectly.

> >Anyone wish to comment on the prospect of a double blind server, set
> >outside U.S. borders, that can act as an interface to the rest of the
> >world, perhaps encrypting or stego'ing the data transfered between it and
> >the user? Basically, an anonymous remailer that acts as a cross between
> >an NNTP, POP3, and SMTP servers.
> 
> How are you going to pitch this technology to all the people with AOL and
> Microsoft Network accounts who barely understand the net? These are the
> people who need exposure to all the uncensored expression they can get.

I was thinking more along the lines of an offline message packet that the
server creates, encrypts, chains through anon mailers with an response
block, and sends to you. You get it, run it through a filter, run your
offline reader, such as Yarn, write your replies, run another program to
get an encrypted, reply-blocked, ready to send packet, and drop it right
into the SMTP port. I don't know if the AOL and MSN software would even
allow this without difficulty, as I haven't seen it. 

I just used it as an example, though. I'm sure there are much better ideas
out there. 

> Instead of figuring out how to build a new treehouse that excludes Exon and
> Hyde, how about fighting the damned bill in the courts?

Here's a chain of events:

1) Congress gets their wish, and it all passes.
2) President signs into law.
3) ISPs:
   a) Shutdown, which isn't really likely,
   b) Severely restrict service, or
   c) Tell the government where to shove it (and watch themselves 
      promptly prosecuted). After one or two ISPs are busted, the rest
      will "fall in line."
4) Someone gets caught writing "<EXON>" in E-MAIL or on USENET, or 
   committing some other form of thought-crime, and is prosecuted.
5) While this person is fighting his or her impending exonization and 
   cleansing of dirty thoughts, the rest of us have our free speech 
   severely restricted. Would I be wrong in saying that it would take a 
   long time, and a lot of money to fight this up to the Supreme Court?

Then we risk the Supreme Court ruling in favor of Congress, however
unlikely that may seem. The S.C. could just as easily tell us to "exon 
off" to keep the world safe for mentally impaired children that, while 
smart enough to operate a computer and go looking for pornography, are 
damaged by it and/or the word "exon."