CDR: RE: Re: Anonymous Remailers cpunk

[Trei, Peter]

> ----------
> From: 	Jim Choate[SMTP:ravage at einstein.ssz.com]
> Reply To: 	Jim Choate
> Sent: 	Thursday, October 12, 2000 7:09 PM
> To: 	cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com
> Subject: 	CDR: Re: Anonymous Remailers cpunk
> 
> 
> On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Steve Furlong wrote:
> 
> > <<Proposal to limit spam sent through anon remailers by requiring that
> > the traffic be encrypted>>
> 
> > Perhaps we're talking at cross purposes. This subthread came along
> > because some people have noticed that anonymous remailers are used for
> > an awful lot of spam. Peter Trei proposed that remailers could pass
> > along only encrypted mail. My understanding was that Alice, the
> > message's author, would encrypt the message with Bob's public key; Bob
> > is the end recipient: a person or a mailing list or whatever. Alice
> > would send the message through Ramona, the anonymous remailer. Ramona is
> > requiring that messages be encrypted as a means of filtering out spam.
> > Ramona does not need to know Bob's public or private keys; Ramona cares
> > only that the message is encrypted.
> 
> So? I set up a email address that I offer to the spammers to sign up to
> the anonymous remailers and then it proxies their email into the encrypted
> network. I figure this baby'll stop'em for about six months.
> 
Jim:

A spammer (or your spammer's proxy) is not going to 
individually encrypt messages to thousands or
millions of end-recipients, each with their own public
key - the time factor makes this uneconomical, and 
the hassle factor of finding all the recipient public 
keys makes it impractical. Thus, only remailers 
which send out plaintext are useful to spammers
as exit remailers.

It is only exit remailers (ie, the remailer which sends
to the final recipient) which get hassled for sending
spam.

The goal is to make remailer operators life easier by
preventing them from being used to spam random
lusers, who may initiate complaints against the
remailer operator.

It is not to prevent spam passing through a remailer
somewhere in mid-cloud. While such encrypted
spam will increase the volume of traffic, for most
remailers that is a Good Thing - more material to
confuse the traffic analysis. As long as it gets 
dropped before leaving the remailer network, no
harm is done.
 
Steve understands this, as does every one else but
you. 

What's the problem?

> For it to really stop spam it would need to be well distributed. So how do
> you offset the increased sys admin issues this raises?
> 
Any remailer operator can decide not to pass along plaintext. So long as the
message sender is aware of this property, nothing more needs to be
distributed.
There are no increased sysadmin issues.

> Then there is the old key management problem.
> 
> James Choate
> 
No, there is not, beyond the fact that the message originator must know the 
final recipient's public key.

Jim, do you really understand how remailer chaining works?

Peter Trei

> Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE!
> Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you
> think it means.
>  					- The Princess Bride
> 
> 
>