Announce: "secret-admirers" mail list

[Bill Stewart]

It's cute, but it won't wash.
The problem is that a list like this doesn't provide any
Obscurity to its users unless there are a large number of subscribers.
One reader out of a thousand is slightly Obscure.
One reader out of three just isn't.
Adding large numbers of posters to the list doesn't help,
though you could use it as a dead drop for those NYTimes subscriptions
and egroups subscriptions if you wanted.

A gateway from alt.anonymous.messages might be fun anyway.
Back when people read Usenet on their own machines,
instead of getting it from an ISP via NNTP clients,
Usenet groups gave readers Pretty Good Obscurity.
That might still be the case at universities or companies
that maintain their own news feeds, but there aren't a lot any more,
especially since a full newsfeed takes multiple T1s full-time.

At 08:39 AM 12/13/00 -0500, BMM wrote:
>I would like to announce the "secret-admirers" mail list.
>
>The "secret-admirers" list is intended to function in a manner similar
>to the well-known Usenet newsgroup "alt.anonymous.messages".  This
>newsgroup serves as a dead drop for communications in which the recipient
>wishes to remain unknown.
>
>While access to a Usenet news server is unavailable in many environments, 
>the ubiquity and flexibility of e-mail may be advantageous for the
>following reasons:
>
>- Penetration:  More people having access to (pseudo|ano)nymizing tools 
>                is generally a good thing.
>- Pool Size:    Higher utilization of the message pool may frustrate
>                traffic analysis.  The list may be gatewayed back into
>                alt.anonymous.messages or vice versa.  CDR-like
>                nodes for redistribution may be established to reduce
>                load on individual nodes.
>- Filtering:    E-mail filtering tools are widely available, allowing
>                recipients to draw only pertinent messages from the
>                pool by filtering on tokens which have been negotiated
>                out-of-band or by the public key to which a message has
>                been encrypted.
>
>The mail list is unmoderated and accepts messages from any submitter.
>Submissions may be sent to "secret-admirers at minder.net" or
>"sa at minder.net".
>
>TO SUBSCRIBE to the list, send a message with "subscribe secret-admirers"
>in the body to majordomo at minder.net.  The more subscribers, the better,
>even if procmail just sends it to /dev/null.
>
>TO UNSUBSCRIBE from the list, send a message with "unsubscribe
>secret-admirers" to majordomo at minder.net.
>
>A digest of this list is available.  This list is not currently archived.
>
>Thanks,
>
>-Brian
>
>--
>bmm at minder.net                                                1024/8C7C4DE9
>
>
>
>
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
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