Anonymous Remailers cpunk

[Declan McCullagh]

On Mon, Oct 16, 2000 at 11:03:29PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> On 17 Oct 2000, Anonymous wrote:
> 
> > Pipe the message into GPG and test the output on STDERR.
> > 
> > There was some perl code posted to the list not too long ago which does this.
> 
> So, now everyone has to use GPG. Why? How do you propose to answer the
> increased attacks on the protocol now that you've made it the monopoly?
> 
> I thought the point of anonymous remailers and commen crypto was to
> enhance liberty rather than enforce (coerce) another standard.

.

This is nonsense. GPG would in this situation not have a monopoly any
more (and in fact less) than SMTP or FTP would be.

Many free market economists believe there is no such thing as a
monopoly sans government intervention.  Even if they're wrong, it is
silly to describe protocols not owned by one entity as a
monopoly. (Who has the "monopoly power," for purposes of legal
analysis, for instance?)

The point of anonymous remailers and commonly-used crypto varies
depending on to whom you speak, but there are worse answers than
protecting liberty. And those who defend it know that coercion is done
by someone holding a gun to your head, not by someone suggestion
a protocol on a mailing list.

But of course this is Jim Choate.

-Declan