Re: White Knight Remailers

["L. McCarthy" <lmccarth@ducie.cs.umass.edu>]

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Adam Shostack writes:
[oddly, I never received the original copy of this; I seem to be missing
list messages with increasing frequency recently :(  ]
> Real remailers (with return address features) should probably
> be advertised in alt.support.* and alt.recovery, in order to build a
> class of "good" users for them. [...]

I commend Ed Carp for his endeavors in this regard; IMHO he's done a splendid
job of both advertising and explaining his remailer in asar (name is a relic,
it would be in alt.recovery.* if it were created today). khijol seems to 
command a fair amount of respect there. I think he's seen as part of the
community, so to speak, and that helps a great deal. I hoped to participate
more actively in asar when I cranked up underdog, but other tasks have 
distracted me.

>         "But Brad, you can't shut down my remailer.  Its used to let
> victims of sexual abuse post anonymously to the net!"

This line of defense appeals, but the technical details seem to tell against
it. :[  Remailers can quite easily be modified only to post to select
groups, so posting to Usenet in general is tough to defend this way. Even 
then, someone could decide to repost all of clari.news.sex to asar, which
would probably piss off everyone in asar as well as BT.  Meanwhile, there's
no way to restrict use of a remailer to private mail on certain topics,
unless you take a page from Bill Wells' book and monitor all the traffic. :<

N. Cognito writes:
> So far I have posted the "remailer.help.all"
> file from chaos.bsu.edu as a "how-to" and the most recent update
> posted here of Raph's Reliable Remailers List as a "where-to."
> Neither has generated any visible response in the newsgroup as of yet.
> My thinking is that it would be a Good Thing to post this kind of
> information on a regular basis (weekly?) to some of the "support" and
> "recovery" newsgroups.  Unless I begin drawing a lot of flames for
> inappropriateness, this is what I plan to do in the immediate future.

I concur. I recommend directing followups to asar.d (full name is
"alt.sexual.abuse.recovery.d") to avoid flames. IMHO John Grohol's Pointers
to Psychology & Support Newsgroups biweekly posting establishes a good
paradigm.  If this hasn't already been done, it would be nice to compile
some things like remailer.help.all@chaos and remailer-list@kiwi into an
official biweekly FAQ posting to alt.privacy.anon-server,
alt.anonymous.messages, alt.answers, and news.answers. (N.B. Crossposting of
*anything* in asar is generally taboo. I think the Pointers to Psych Groups
list gets away with it, using followups out of asar.)

     -L. Futplex McCarthy; use "Subject: remailer-help" for an autoreply
PGP key by finger or server; "Better watch what you say, or they'll be calling
you a radical...a liberal" --Supertramp  "[CIA/KGB mole Aldrich Ames] took 
information in shopping bags out the front door" --miscellaneous Congressperson

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