Re: Anonymous Remailers

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Matt Thomlinson writes:

> 
> Yes, those of us who run remailers sometimes run them from university 
> accounts. Such was my case.

Matt Thomlinson was/is one of the True Pioneers of Cypherpunkdom, and
I would give him a "Cypherpunk of the Whatever Award," were such
things not in bad taste (pace Detweiler!) and also beyond my
prerogative to give.

> The death-blow was a remailer target complaining to me about someone 
> sending unsolicited mail to them through my remailer. Instead of replying 
...
> I was able to keep it limping for about another week. I got support from 
> a few cypherpunks around here, people on the list like JDraper, TMay, 
> etc., and from others including Whit Diffie, Neal Koblitz, etc.
> 
> I might have been able to fight the shutdown, but I saw it as a losing 
> battle.

Which points to yet another feature needed in the The Next Generation
Remailer: a bulletproof site! I don't think I emphasized this enough
in my list of desirable features. Having offshore (out of the U.S.)
sites is nice, but having sites resistant to pressures from
universities and corporate site administrators is of even greater
practical consequence.

The commercial providers, like Netcom, Portal, and Panix, cannot be
counted on to stand and fight should pressures mount (this is just my
guess, not an aspersion against their backbones, whether organic or
Internet).

Standalone boxes with their own domain names, like the "ah.com" of
Hughes and Abraham, or the "io.com" of the Austin folks, would seem to
be the way to go. How we could or should use these boxes, how to
recompense them for the traffic and (potential) hassle, are issues for
us to talk about.

In any case, in a few years I expect we'll see thousands of such
sites, and fraidy-cat sysadmins will be a thing of the past.

--Tim May




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