Remailers an unsolveable paradox?

[Tyler Durden]

Some good points, Johnny.

I'm not convinced Spam and the remailers are inherently incompatible. Or at 
least, I'm thinking there's a sort of uncertainty principle that should work 
between legit remailable messages and spam.

it may be a tricky business, but I suspect that the need of spammers to send 
out huge numbers of messages may be exploitable. Hell...they may in some 
ways be an asset if handled correctly: Much easier to hide remailed messages 
in larger torrents than in sparsely trafficked remailer networks.

And of course, it may be that the need to sell goods (ie, from a specific 
URL) means that anonymity is not so useful, particularly if there are 
time+bandwidth constraints on portions of the network (eg a remailer has a 
max bandwidth that gets throttled back if there's a large woosh of traffic 
in a certain period of time).

So I don't think the problem is unsolvable, but I agree with your essential 
point that it needs looking into.

-TD



>From: Nomen Nescio <nobody at dizum.com>
>To: cypherpunks at al-qaeda.net
>Subject: Remailers an unsolveable paradox?
>Date: Wed,  1 Sep 2004 13:30:01 +0200 (CEST)
>
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>Are remailers an unsolveable paradox?
>
>     We want to be able to provide the means for whistleblowers and
>others to communicate in a secure and anonymous fashion. Yet we need
>to make sure we're not abused too much since sooner or later laws
>will catch up with the remailers should abuse sky-rocket.
>
>     Once upon a time all email servers were open relays. This was a
>friendly time and spam wasn't invented. As time changed the focus
>turned on securing the relaying procedures and has continued until
>this day. Yet as we know the flow of spam (most of it coming directly
>or indirectly from US) continued to increase, despite even existing
>legislation today.
>
>     What are the possible solutions for the remailers? Make all
>remailers middleman only and adding the ability to opt-in for
>delivery outside the network? Having a network of middleman remailers
>and some nymservers that only delivers to other nymserver or opted-in
>servers will at least provide some means for people to communicate
>between themselves. It would in practise destroy the ability to
>contact anyone outside the network though, making the network an
>isolated place for a few. Using techniques like Hashcash should be
>more or less mandatory even today to make it harder to mailbomb or
>send large amounts spam? Why is it not?
>
>     Regardless of what any hardcore cypherpunk or old-timers in the
>remailer community may think about any ideas imposing restrains on
>the useability of remailers something just have to be made about the
>abuse of the system. I also predict that the abuse will increase so
>time is ticking in a sense.
>
>     Making sure we have robust remailing services in one shape or
>another and at the same time have some kind of at least indirect
>acceptance from legislators and also a low degree of spam flowing
>through are essential goals.
>
>     The average naive and ignorant redneck will never ever understand
>the principal arguments for free speech that makes remailers useful.
>The average american do not think and analyze what is told to him.
>You will probably today find millions of americans who believe that
>Saddam and Al-Qaeda did business just because Bush and the
>administration lied about that initially, even though it's more or
>less confirmed today that those links were not there.
>
>     The rednecks also vote however (to some extent) and that's why it
>will be a piece of cake to strike against the remailers if the
>politicians would like to. And they will, if and when serious abuse
>were to happen more often utilizing remailers. What would happen if
>it was found (or simply suspected or claimed) that some terror deed
>was planned using remailers? How long time would it take for us to
>see new laws being proposed? Not long. And don't forget that anyone
>(like Tom Ridge himself) could send bogues messages through the
>system trying to
>
>     Since providing a true non-censoring remailing service and at the
>same time safeguard against spam and abuse are therotically
>incompatible I guess remailers are indeed a paradox waiting to be
>shut down sooner or later by politicians if we're not open to at
>least discuss some aspects of how these services are operated.
>
>
>Johnny Doelittle
>
>
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>
>
>
> > Effective today, Lemuria will be going middlemen.
> >
> > Sometime around the middle of the month, Lemuria will go away.
> >
> > This is final.
> >
> >
> > The main reasons are that I've lost my faith in the usefulness of
> > the remailer network. I have indications that the remailer network
> > is
> > being massively abused, on the scale where the legitimate mails are
> > a tiny fraction that would be better served using other means.
> >
> > There are two main reasons for my thoughts. One is I have looked at
> > the bounces I receive, and compared their numbers to my statistics.
> > According to that data, without having run a statistically
> > significant analysis, the major traffic coming through Lemuria is
> > Spam, with
> > threats and harrassment a second. I realize that in the no-bounces,
> > the fraction of legitimate mails will be higher, but even assuming
> > a factor of 10, it is still a negligable part.
> >
> > Second, I've the mail attached below yesterday. In case you can't
> > read german, it is essentially spam advertising the mixmaster
> > software and some book and/or software I haven't tested, might be a
> > mixmaster
> > client, might be a trojan. This is a sign for me that the anonymous
> > remailer network is being used systematically for abuse, on a large
> > scale. I don't want to be a part of that.
> >
> > As mixmaster has no features whatsoever to prevent this crap, and
> > the "encrypted only" switch doesn't do what it should do, and
> > legitimate traffic is close to zero anyways, I'll be taking Lemuria
> > down and
> > leaving the remailer community.
> >
> > It was an interesting time, and between frog, the SciTol fanatics
> > (from both sides) and a couple really cool people, I've learned a
> > lot about society that I'm not sure I really needed to know. :)

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