A Trial Balloon to Ban Email?

[Sunder]

Who cares?  How fast did Ip6 proliferate again?  Right.  So why expect
that normal SMTP will be banished?  And even if it is, you can always run
your own alternate server without the PIT bulshit.

If we turn the problem on it's head, all servers should use TLS and
identify themselves to each other as well as encrypt the traffic.  This
way, you can weed our spammers by eliminating known spam servers and it
won't kill remailers.

Speaking of which, what's to stop a remailer from using a verisign
signed PIT anyway after removing the original?  Exit nodes of remailers
are traceable anyway.  

Even so, there's always the opportunity for self signed or test PIT's,
etc...

If by "receiving email software" we're talking about your mail program, it
doesn't matter much at all.  If we mean an MTA (sendmail, postfix, qmail)
then it becomes an issue only when you don't control the MTA.  Which they
claim will not happen during the transition phase.

Also:

"The Tripoli Pit concept does not require that all senders' messages be
authenticated to the same level. It would be completely possible for a
sender to generate a message (and associated Pit) that was not fully
authenticated or that even was anonymous (within the bounds of associated
MTAs/relays and the underlying Internet or local operating system
environments to offer anonymous messages or transport parameters).

"It is recognized that there are important situations where it may be
highly desirable to receive e-mail from poorly- authenticated or
completely unauthenticated sources, for example, in the case of a
whistleblower submission address, government agencies, or a range of other
situations."


There certainly is the danger that everyone would opt to not accept
anonymous emails, but then alternate means of communication would stil
proliferate... say like usenet, but over p2p nets, or whatever.


----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---------------------------
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
<--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.        \|/
 + v + :           The look on Sadam's face - priceless!       
--------_sunder_ at _sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------

On Fri, 9 May 2003, Nomen Nescio wrote:

> Lauren Weinstein, founder of People for Internet Responsibility, has
> come out with a new spam solution at http://www.pfir.org/tripoli-overview.
> 
> According to this proposal, the Internet email architecture would be
> revamped.  Each piece of mail would include a PIT, a Payload Identity
> Token, emphasis on Identity.  This would be a token certifying that you
> were an Authorized Email User as judged by the authorities.  Based on
> your PIT, the receiving email software could decide to reject your
> email.