more ideas on anonymity

[Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>]

>  Umm.. Isn't all this talk about anonymous remail abuse really beging
>for an pseudonymous/anonymous certificate service?

Well, yes.

There has been a huge conflagration on the pem-dev list lately
concerning naming issues, X.500, etc.  I am somewhat disturbed by what
I see as a fundamental mentality of PEM: the desire to lift intact all
existing political, economic, and social relationships into the
electronic domain.

Naming is done in the ISO way, that is, subordinated to existing
national boundaries.  Individuals are expected to be registered in the
naming hierarchy.  Identities in the electronic world are expected to
map to entities in the real world.

Does this not seems fundamentally limiting to the potential of the
electronic world?

I agree with Tim that we have made good progress.  But we need more
than simple remailers.  We need people to use remailers, and we need
to make that easy to do.  We need key distribution mechanisms.  We
need better meeting spaces than mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups
and private mail.  We need markets and contracts.

If we wish to re-envision the world, we must do so while there is time
to implement it.  Let us proceed quickly.

Onward.

Eric