Idea for a Minor New Remailer Feature: Dead Drop Aliases

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

Istvan Oszaraz von Keszi writes:

> My question is what is necessary, to create an address for the
> remailer?  I'd like it addressed as something other than my
> personal account.  Do I contact my sysadmins for a new address,
> or is this something which is user configurable.
> 


This reminds me of an idea: why not create "symbolic links" between
pseudonyms chosen by the remailer operators and their actual physical
sites?

The idea is this: fred@uptight.org wants to run a remailer, but he
doesn't want his managers at "uptight.org" to know he's advertising
this service (e.g., by postings in a public place, by the finger of
remailer@soda.berkeley.edu, etc.).

He wants a "dead drop" to forward to him mail intended to be remailed.

What he wants is an alias at another site, run probably by a
sympathetic Cypherpunks who has more control over his own site. So,
joe@uptight.org arranges with eric@freedom.org to establish this
alias.

(eric@freedom.org knows what's going on....the only security is that
based on the trust between eric and joe.)

I know, I know, this is "security through obscurity." (In a sense.)
And eric@freedom.org might _just as well_ run the second or third or
nth remailer _himself_.

But the advantage of there being _many_ physical people acting as
remailers is still there. And it encourages people who might shy away
from running a remailer to do so.

The overall security is at least not any lower than if joe@uptight.org
got the remailer traffic directly.

There are other wrinkles. I can give more of my thoughts if there's
any interest.

Not to volunteer anybody's copious spare time, but I have a hunch a
Perl program could implement this automatic reflector easily. Maybe
some mailers can already handle this (I don't see any commands in elm,
my mailer, that can do selective bouncing/forwarding....kind of like a
kill file, except the targetted address gets forwarded.)

Any thoughts?

--Tim May


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