Re: Poor Man's Anonymous Remailer

[George A. Gleason <gg@well.sf.ca.us>]

Re Thug & Phiber on the long-term chances that OSPS will forward the entire
number to the destination....

The solution to this is Anonymous Diverters.  You have pairs of telephone
numbers set up.  Callers come in on one side, and are connected to the other
side behind a toll-restrictor that only allows calls beginning with 1-800+.
The minimum configuration is two lines, one in and one out.  With a PBX you
can handle from three patches at one time all the way up to 10,000.  I can
provide hardware and associated programming to anyone who is interested in
starting one of these services.   

When using an Anonymous Diverter, the destination 800-number only gets the
ANI of the diverter's outgoing side.  Now of course, Big Brother can simply
watch the incoming side of the diverter if he wants to, but at least this
keeps your originating number secret from the destination 800-number.  

Right now there are 900/976 numbers set up with this kind of service, but I
don't see any evidence that they are designed for data applications; and the
per-minute rates are typically way high.  What is needed is a network of
local service providers who can do the same job either free as a public
service or at a reasonable cost.  One way to provide service at reasonable
cost is to have prepaid flat-rate cash accounts from regular subscribers and
give each of them some kind of password (no ID there either; you pay cash
and choose your password, it never ties in to your name or anything else).
This is also something we can set up on our larger PBXs if you're
interested.

Come to think of it, we have a client whose PBX would be ideal for this, but
we have to check with them.  It would only be open on an after-hours basis
of course, when they're not using the lines.  And it won't cost them
anything since those 800+ calls are free.  Now also, if anyone in the Bay
Area wants to set up one of these, the actual monthly cost is less than
$50.00 for lines, plus line cards at the rate of about $600 per each eight
trunks (four links through the system).  Anyone interested...?

We're going to be putting in a larger switch later this year which will also
give us the ability to do those anonymous cash accounts such that you could
have toll-call dialling privileges through the system on a prepaid basis.  
Anyone interested in *that*...?

-  gg@well.sf.ca.us