possible solution to the anonymous harrassment problem

[Marc Horowitz <marc@Aktis.COM>]

(I'm also marc@mit.edu.  But composing over a 9600 baud line sucks :-)

I just had an idea.  Assume we have some sort of workable system for
anonymous return addresses.  What if every message were *required* to
have one, and if the remailers verified their correctness (at least as
far as we can, given the fakability of net mail)?  Then, if someone
received harassing email, she could ask the remailer maintainers to
find the real name of the sender of a piece of mail.  Assuming
reasonable remailer maintainers (and we can use positive reputations
to decide that), they'd be able to do this.  The system has a built-in
safety:  All the remailer maintainers would have to agree that a
message was indeed harassing to the recipient before they would use
their private keys to follow the chain back.  Unless all the
maintainers agreed to trace the message, it would be impossible, and
the sender's anonymity would be assured.

I'm just trying to think of technical solutions to our societal woes,
as hopeless as this may be.  Remember, if people were honest, we
wouldn't need encryption, either.  Sigh.

		Marc