A Chance Encounter with Brad Templeton, of ClariNet

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

Mark Terka, of Toronto, wrote:

> Well, I think it will be the trigger hopefully generates more remailer's
> in Europe. So far we only (since the evident demise of wein) have usura's 
> excellent
> remailers in the Netherlands. It would be nice if more were placed overseas,
> beyond the reach of U.S. pressure.

More on why non-U.S. remailers are so important.

Last Saturday night, after the Cypherpunks meeting and dinner, I was
giving Colin Plumb (a Toronto person) a ride to the hotel he was
staying at in Los Gatos. We stopped at a mega bookstore (Barnes and
Noble, Santa Clara) and ran immediately into yet another Toronto
person (ex, actually), Brad Templeton, well-known as the operator of
ClariNet. (I've met Brad many times, but he still doesn't remember my
name or what I do, which says something interesting about one of us.)

Brad heard the word "Cypherpunks" and gave his views on things. I'll
summarize in bullet form, as I lack the time to formulate his points
in full paragraphs.

* Brad was initially unaware that "fully anonymous" remailers exist
("fully" in the sense of no records of who is who, not in the sense of
perfect security against NSA type of opponents). He thought
Cypherpunks remailers were some variant of Julf's type.

* When he grasped the basic idea, of chained mixes, he got quite upset
and said they were "threats" to his business. (Anonymous forwarding of
ClariNet articles happens, of course. Brad was expecting that he could
get a court order, if it came down to that, and was shocked to hear
that the Cypherpunks model does not make this possible.)

* I shrugged, and said that, longterm, copyright was dead as we know
it today. I pointed out that dozens of Cypherpunks-style remailers are
operational, including many in Europe and elsewhere.

* Brad: "Then they'll be outlawed." 

* As we debated this in the aisles of the bookstore (a true Silicon
Valley scene!), he formulated the view that a person like him probably
needs to file lawsuits to get them declared illegal on the basis of
being "attractive nuisances." As he put it, "like unfenced swimming
pools in back yards."

* "And what about the non-U.S. sites?," I asked. He had no good
answer, except that maybe laws restricting access to non-U.S. sites
would have to be considered. (I didn't get into the obvious issues
about the impossibility of doing this, of stego, etc.)

* Brad also expressed the view that the recently passed Digital
Telephony Act would "force" remailer operators to make their traffic
available to the proper authorities. (I disagree, from my reading of
the DT Act, but didn't debate it with Brad. And of course it's real
hard to get those sites in Russia, Holland, and other countries to
obey U.S. rules. Not impossible, hence our need for vigilance and for
proliferating sites as rapidly as possible.)

I debated not writing an "incident report" to you folks, being as how
Brad is not on this list and is basically uninformed on the details of
our remailers, but I feel that a "heads up" is warranted.

Brad and ClariNet have already caused one remailer to go down (the
operator of it has commented here before and of course can do so again
if he sees this), and his comments Saturday night cause me to think he
may be considering a test case of some sort. (He is fearful of losing
his Associate Press/etc. franchise if he fails to enforce his rights.)

So, I draw several conclusions from this, and from the comments in
this thread:

1. Get as many _remailer accounts_ offshore as quickly as possible.

2. Separate the "ownership of a machine" from "remailer accounts."
There is no good reason for the owner of a machine that does remailing
to actually be doing the remailing. And many good reasons why a
particular machine should have _many_ separate "mail accounts" that
actually are the remailes. (This is the "remailer-in-a-box" I've been
pushing.) 

(For one thing, the ECPA protects the mail, and allows the machine
owner to adopt a "hands off" stance. For another, an "abused account"
can simply and quickly be killed, with new ones taking its place!
Think of the benefits.)

3. I think the "intellectual property" industry (Brad and Friends)
will be looking at remailers and anonymous systems more carefully.
Legislation _could_ come out of this. I don't expect anything soon, as
Brad is just now realizing the implications....

4. However, I think it's impossible to stop all these things, for
reasons well known to all of us. Brad's "attractive nuisance" idea
won't fly, not if it means that e-mail must be written on "postcards,"
and not if it means Americans can't send e-mail outside the U.S.

(These are standard Cypherpunks issues. I didn't try to educate Brad
about the impossibility of banning encryption, about the alternatives
available, about steganography, etc. He seemed so wrapped up in
the idea of "doing something!" that arguing the CP agenda would have
been a waste. Plus, I was tired.)

So, not a cause for panic, as he will probably do nothing. But just as
Adm. Bobby Inman's comments give some insight into the position of the
intelligence community, Brad Templeton's comments give insights into
the coming battles over intellectual property.


--Tim May

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