The Difficulty of Source Level Blocking

[greg@ideath.goldenbear.com (Greg Broiles)]

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uunet!netcom.com!tcmay (Timothy C. May) writes:

> Thus, so long as at least *one* remailer is not doing source
> screening, and that at least some encryption is used (not all nodes
> have to do it, obviously), then source-level screening will not work.

It'd also be possible for two parties to collude; Alice agrees to pass
Mallet's traffic, but tells the other remailers in the co-op that she'll
filter Mallet's traffic. Digital signatures will allow her to pass only
approved unapproved traffic (e.g., forged test-posts from Mallet won't
be remailed by Alice). Where message tracing isn't possible, remailer
operators will need to know and trust one another.

> Very long term, when message costs are borne by the sender, this
> problem goes away. (Others remain, such as death threats, extortion,
> markets for murder, etc., but they're in a different category.)

If you mean digital postage when you say "message costs", I don't see
how charging Detweiler $.25 or so to send his messages is going to stop
him; it might put a dent in the sheer volume, but probably not in the
variety of inappropriate groups he chooses to annoy. If message costs
are high enough to deter Detweiler, they're going to be high enough to
deter legitimate and useful posts, too.

The sender-of-record of inappropriate posts is still going to get heat
from the net, whether or not they collected their digital postage.

The best deal I've found so far for (bulk) mail delivery is UUPSI's
$50/month flat-rate UUCP (local dialups many places) - is anyone aware
of a cheaper alternative? Perhaps it's time to test the net's response
to a remailer site whose response to complaints is "Sorry. People are
rude. Nothing to be done about it."

Have the owners of private remailers (rebma.mn.org, utter.dis.org,
extropia.wimsey.com, according to Karl's list) taken flak from their
service providers for remailing?


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--
Greg Broiles               ".. has bizarre Cyberanarchist theories relating
greg@goldenbear.com         to human punishment." -- L. Detweiler