No subject

[Asymmetric]

> I do understand how both types work, however, the opportunity for
> subterfuge is always present. I was making a point that the assumed
> security of a remailer should not factor in if you intend to put yourself
> at risk.  Assumptions are dangerous all over the place, and if your
> assumption could get you into trouble, it's better to verify it or not
> instead of just proceeding blindly, if at all possible.

Even if you trust each remailer to "do the right thing" only 10% of the
time, by chaining 10 such remailers the probability of having your identity
revealed is only 1 in 10^10 - assuming that the remailers are independent.
[That secondary assumption can be improved by chosing remailers in different
countries.]

> What is the outrageous claim?  That someone could purposely set up an
> insecure remailer, claim that it's secure, and that people could then
> unwittingly use it to incriminate themselves?

No - that by using an open-relay mailer you get the same anonymity as using
a Type 1 / Type 2 remailer.

> and honestly my comment about faking
> the return addresses was in no way to say that this method could replace
> remailers

Funny, that's how it looked for everyone. Admit it - you said something
stupid. [Even I admit I'm wrong sometimes. <g>]

> I'm going to stop myself here.. The original email I sent was simply a
> question about what could be done to possibly quell the flow of spam
> generated by this list, followed by a few suggestions.  It's gotten
utterly
> out of hand because somebody apparently took it as a personal attack, and
> responded with a series of attacks of his own.

Most of the regular subscribers are tired of the complaints (which are
usually worse - as in more and bigger - than the spam).

> As I said before, if [you] (the reader on the list) don't want to hear
> these questions, then what's good for the goose is good for the
> gander.  Filter my emails if you like; It'll be a lot easier for you to
> filter them automatically than it will be to filter the spam messages in
> any event.

I don't use any (deleting) filters; I read about 500 messages each day, and
it only takes me 2-3 hours. A friend of mine reads around 2,000 messages
each day. It's not such a big deal.

> Instead, I received another nasty letter, and then a few days later a call
> from my upstream provider.  They denied her request to deliver up my name
> and address, but told me that if I didn't take the information down that
it
> would be a violation of the service agreement, and that they would
> disconnect the frame relay.  I explained to their (the ISPs) lawyer the
> situation, and that they did not actually own the copyrights in
> question.  He responded with "I know, but considering their history, they
> are very willing to take us to court over this, and honestly we don't want
> to deal with that.  Take it down or we shut you down, we don't care who's
> right, we just don't want a lawsuit."

Yep. Same thing - the fear of lawsuits - is why we were warned, when we came
to the US, to not even look at our female colleagues: even a hint of a
lawsuit would make our employer send us back to our country in a heartbeat -
whether we're guilty or not. [They wouldn't care.]

US sucks a lot. Too bad this is where the money is :)

> Needless to say, faced with the entire site being removed, I removed the
> materials.

One word: Freenet. See http://freenet.sourceforge.net

> I see.  But trying to find a way to save even more time and bandwidth by
> even attempting to figure out a solution to this problem is not as
valuable?

No. There already is a solution: the client filters everything. Wait,
there's also a second one: build your own cypherpunks node. [The second one
is even better.]

> It comes down to a simple bit of confusion on my part.  I cannot
understand
> the mentality of someone who has the time and resources to effectively
> combat the spam on this list, and yet who does not have the time or
> resource to either respond in a somewhat civil fashion, or to just delete
> the message along with the rest of the refuse.

Spam takes <1 second to identify and delete.

> You seemed to be a bit more level headed, so while I still totally
disagree
> that it's a waste of time to try and figure a way around this problem, I
> haven't utterly lost respect for you as I have with Tim.  "Pillar of the
> community" or not, the guy is an utter asshole.

Here I agree with you :)

Mark