Re: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records

[Michael Froomkin <froomkin@law.miami.edu>]

On Wed, 10 Apr 1996, Steve Reid wrote:

> > 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 

The above is very confusing and stems, IMHO, from imprecise use of terms.
It is important to distinguish between 4 types of remailers: 

* traceable pseudonymous
* untraceable pseudonymous
* traceable anonymous
* untraceable anonymous

The text quoted above is true if it describes a "traceable pseudonymous" 
remailer, e.g.  anon.penet.fi.  This is different from, say, a cypherpunks
style remailer. 

For a full, perhaps tedious, explication of all this and other stuff too, see

http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/ocean1-7.htm

an earlier, much shorter, and slightly dated, treatement of the anonymity 
issues only can be found at http://www.law.cornell.edu/jol/froomkin.htm

[...]

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