Re: remailer abuse

[Ben Holiday <ncognito@gate.net>]

On Sun, 19 Nov 1995, Greg Broiles wrote:

> I think adopting a submissive or apologetic stance with respect to the 
> operation of a remailer is a mistake. What we do is protected by the First
> amendment, supports a 200+ year tradition of anonymous political speech in
> America, provides a valuable service to a worldwide community, and can help
> avoid the very abuse they are accused of facilitating. The child who was the

[extremely lucid comments clipped to save bandwidth]

Agreed, wholeheartedly. The above paragraph would be a perfect candidate 
for wide disemination across the net. 

The facts are that to eliminate the "abusive" mail would require 
crippling the remailer system to an unacceptable degree. Therefore we as 
operators are in a position of being forced to either tolerate messages 
that we may disagree (strongly) with, shut down the remailers, or resort 
to inadequate 40bit encryption and psuedo-anonymous Penti.fi remailing.
(no offense to Julf intended..)

I see nothing submissive or apologetic about pointing this fact out in a 
focused and organised way. In fact, making this fact plain might actually 
limit the number of people using the remailers to harrass other users. If 
general oppinion is that remailer operators accept and condone /all/ 
forms of communication, without regard for it potential effects, why 
shouldnt the spammer take advantage of our generosity?

Certainly being PC should not be the primary consideration in any 
undertaking, but the united states (and other nations) have well paid and 
well organised spin doctors working to convince the public that 
cryptographers and remail operators are "bad" people who's only purpose 
is to aid pedophiles and other criminals in carrying out their dastardly 
deeds. Ignoring the political implications of operating a remailer is 
simply foolish. Public oppinion is going to be an important consideration 
when the laws come to the table. Sure, we could move the remailers off 
shore, but why do that unless we have to? The idea of being a 
"cryptorebel", or an underground warrior for peace and privacy is 
certainly romantic, but i'd like to think that it doesnt have to be that way.

Then again, i didnt need propaganda to convince me that I needed privacy. 
Maybe im just strange..