Re: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records

[Steve Reid <steve@edmweb.com>]

> I thought that most or all of the cypherpunk anonymous remailers don't
> keep records.  Not even on backup tapes.  The whole idea is that there
> aren't logs.  But maybe they have found some remailers that are

When a person recieves a message from someone using an anonymous 
remailer, the return address will usually work, depending on the 
remailer. The return address is for an address on the remailer, and 
sending to that address, the remailer will forward the message back to 
the person who owns that anonymous address.

The problem with that, of course, is that the remailer has to keep a 
record of who owns each anonymous account, so that it can direct the 
replies to the anonymous person. These records could be siezed.

Also (not related to the records), if the remailer does not encrypt the 
replies that it forwards to the anonymous owner, it would be *very* 
vunlerable to traffic analysis... Just watch for your message leaving the 
remailer, and see the address of the anonymous person, or the address of 
the next remailer in the chain.

I don't really know much about remailers, but I don't think there's much
to know... If I'm mistaken about any of the above, I'm sure someone will
correct me. 

BTW, has anyone out there created an anonymous web forwarder? I'm sure 
there are a lot of people out there who don't like the idea of having 
their email address in the log files of dozens of web servers... Creating 
a simple web forwarder wouldn't be hard.