Anonymizing Scam

[Declan McCullagh]

"Nomen" makes a reasonable point. There is nothing objectionable about
Lance selling anonymizer.com accounts to the Feds (or with a
crypto-company selling crypto-ware to the Feds, not least since
they'll get the software or service one way or another). If you treat
'em the same way you treat any other paying company, and I suspect
that is the case with Lance, John's allegation of "sucking up" to
espionage and law enforcement agencies is uncalled for.

-Declan



On Fri, Nov 23, 2001 at 11:10:08PM +0100, Nomen Nescio wrote:
> John Young writes:
> 
> > Below are strange statements coming from Lance Cottrell.
> > Is there no anonymizer that is not sucking up to the TLAs?
> > Worse, has there ever been?
> 
> Are you implying that Lance Cottrell is making anonymous surfing data
> available to security agencies?  That is a strong accusation and if you
> want to make it, you should do so explicitly.  You are calling him a
> liar and a fraud.
> 
> Nothing in the article you quote gives you any foundation for such
> a claim.  All it says is that agencies are using Anonymizer to browse
> anonymously, just like its other customers.  Any crypto technology, if
> it is truly useful, can be used by government agencies as well as others.
> 
> One might as well accuse you of conspiracy since cryptome often serves
> TLAs:  You fraud!  You are saving people's access patterns to your files
> and making them available to the police!  How dare you!
> 
> These accusations are as unfounded as those you made against Lance.
> Those who make such claims should provide evidence and not innuendo.
> 
> 
> 
> > http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/11/20/privacy.reut/index.html
> >
> > One company that is still making money off privacy is
> > Anonymizer.com, a San Diego-based company that offers
> > anonymous Web surfing for $50 a year, or $5 a month. The
> > company has 20,000 active subscribers, said President Lance
> > Cottrell. 
> >
> > "We're still seeing very strong growth," Cottrell said. "Most
> > people are looking to prevent their boss, insurance company,
> > spouse, ISP (Internet Service Provider) from knowing where
> > they're going." 
> >
> > Even so, Anonymizer.com began a push six months ago to
> > market its service to corporations, including law and investigation
> > firms, and the U.S. government, he said. 
> >
> > "Intelligence agencies have been using us for years, especially
> > since September 11," Cottrell said. "They use us to keep an eye
> > on bad guy sites" with covert monitoring. 
> >
> > -----
> >
> > The pattern: initial big deal about helping the public protect its
> > privacy, then boom, a later revelation it was impossible to
> > continue ...  well, the reasons vary, but the cover story is always
> > the need for money, the Judas rationale.
> >
> > Meanwhile, the fabulous surfing data archive allegedly inviolate, or
> > never retained, or no way to ever know who was using the
> > service, that is the data all free-gift marketers aim to collect.
> >
> > Were any anonymizing archives ever trashed or truly protected
> > against concurrent snarfing? Is Safeweb laughing like ZKS,
> > like Lance? First, the US, then EU, then CN, all the way to
> > MD.
> >
> > What does this say about commercial anonymizing services,
> > and remailers? And crypto, especially free PGP, and the honeypot
> > AES?