Anonymity: A Modest Proposal

[Eli Brandt]

Hal said:
> I think splitting the message would be OK, but then the question is who
> is responsible for reassembling it?  If there were a "reassembly
> server" which took such messages, assembled them, and forwarded them,
> then we would be right back where we started from.  If the end user is
> responsible for reassembly, then that is tantamount to voluntarily
> agreeing to receive anonymous messages, and that is no problem.

I was thinking that the recipient would be responsible -- otherwise,
there's not much point.  Yes, this is particularly awkward for news.
Also, the sender would probably have to do the splitting, to avoid
presenting any remailer with the whole message.

Is there really "no problem" if the recipient does the merging?  If
Child Terrorist A is communicating with Child Terrorist B, law
enforcement is going to be unhappy.  I imagine you don't get too many
complaints about that, but it's part of the political argument against
remailers.  

--
   Eli Brandt
   eli+ at cs.cmu.edu