Moral Crypto

[Tim May]

On Tuesday, September 4, 2001, at 07:26 PM, A. Melon wrote:

> declan at well.com writes:
>> Anonymity allows people to evade laws. Governments don't like that.
>> Read the archives.
>
> It would be nice to see at least one example of something nasty that
> could be done with an anonymous remailer in the next few years where
> you couldn't get the same effect at the corner phone booth or dropping a
> letter in a public mailbox.

Are you dense, or just ignorant?

Consider the broad class of two-way communications, whether for 
information buying and selling, extortion, espionage, arranging contract 
killings, etc. Are these sufficiently "nasty" for you?

Now consider that both the "corner phone booth" and "dropping a letter 
in a public mailbox" are untraceable only in _one_ direction. Two-way 
communication is not untraceable.

If you don't see this, despite years and years of this point being 
explained on this list and in books like those by Ludlow, Levy, Kelly, 
and others, there is no hope for you.

Agent Farr, this feeble attempt to entrap us into giving examples of 
"nasty" applications is puerile. It was all laid out a decade ago.

--Tim May