CDR: Re: Anonymous Remailers cpunk

[Bill Stewart]

At 05:00 PM 10/3/00 -0500, Jim Choate wrote:

>A remailer should do NO content checking, ever. 
>It's ONLY job is to route and destroy traffic analysis.

No, its ONLY job is to do whatever the operator says it will do.
You can choose to use it or not based on that.
However, if you allow non-encrypted email in or out,
you are enabling traffic analysis, so by your assertion,
failing to require encrypted outgoing mail is wrong.

>So, how come all of a sudden we're injecting algorithms that the users
>must know to even access the network? What sort of regulatory mechanism is
>required to mediate changes to the process?

Algorithms the users must know, and don't, lead to random failures,
low reliability, complaints to the admins, and people not using the remailer.
That regulatory mechanism is called the market :-) (even in a gift economy.)
There are several remailer-pinging services out there, 
and unless they fall into the category of things the remailer supports,
the reliability numbers they report on the remailer will be quite low.

				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
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