Remailers next generation?

[Paul Harrison]

Tim May wrote:
>The same old "improvements" are still not
>implemented. Notably, pay-for-use remailers.

Yup, same old sticky wicket.  And you get the service you pay for.

>What _has_ changed is that interest in running remailers is waning.
>I attribute this mainly to a decline in interest in the _politics_ of
>remailers and Cypherpunks technologies in general.

Whine level remains high.  Actions in decline.  E.g. "I'd  rather be
out shooting than remopping"

>Without a political focus, there is no longer any sexiness to crypto.

There are many paths to enlightenment.  Not all are politically focused.

>It will take a new crackdown to stimulate a new round of interest in
>Cypherpunks technologies.

We're being slowly frog-boiled.  And the sad thing is that the persecution,
er prosecution, of Bell, the Waco obscenity, the Russian crypto hacker
arrest(s)...these are viewed by most of our fellow citizen units as good
things
which show that God is in His Heaven, there is Rule of Law and all is right
with the world. "Why would anyone carry cash on a airplane?" they ask.
And the public bumbles of our elite LEAs leave people much less paranoid
about them.

>Were I a Brit, I'd certainly consider the RIP types of crackdowns to
>be reason enough to code politically.

Here is where I believe that those silly anti-globalists may actually have a

point.  the U.S. federal statute DMCA is a WIPO-compliant act.  RIP in the
U.K. was at least partly inspired by years of U.S. evangalism about gak and
the horror of crypto in the public's hands.  The demise of "offshore
banking"
has been by the strong-arming of various sovereign nations by the E.U. and
the U.S.  What we are witnessing is a new kind of gunboat diplomacy, as
nations are coming face to face with the ebbing relevance of geography.
They
are reaching out to find ways to protect their power.  It is important that
our
main trading partners are increasingly implementing national legislation
which
reduces opportunities for jurisdictional arbitrage.  And for the political
cryptographer or the (cryptic political animal?) this is as significant as a
tangible
piece of silicon such as CLIPPER.

It was a positive that Bush recently stood up to EU gun control pressure, in
the
name of the 2nd Ammendment.  Would Ashcroft do the same if the assault were
on Search & Siezure or Freedom of Speech, through some multi-national
mandating
of ISP compliance with Carnivore or RIP-like logging, decryption and
tapping?
I sincerely doubt it.  How can you conduct a war on drugs and cybercrime and

their fellow traveller money laundering if we don't "harmonize" the
international
standards for lawful breaking, entering, confiscation?

When they come for the remops there will already be licenses to run SMTP
servers,
and like the Chicago police, "they" can just pick up those silly little
mixie masters for
expired tags or failure to stop (after explicit court order) death threats
for
 happy-fun court judges, or ponzi schemes which defrauded little old ladies,

or porn pictures sent to 9 year old girls, whatever.

The citizen units will applaud.  And crypto will be sexy again.