Re: crosspost re remailers

[Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>]

On Wed, 15 May 1996 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:

> Some nyms are valuable, most are valueless by design.  All remailers
> should be valueless by design.  The penet.fi remailer design is 
> unsatisfactory precisely because it penet.fi is valuable, hence a
> target.  If it gets shut down a lot of people lose their nyms, 
> causing much inconvenience.

The entry points into the system, though, have value. You need to be able
to locate and trust them. Remailer reputations are valuable. Otherwise,
you're liable to send your message into the NSA-remailers-are-us system.
You need a web of trust among remailers at the very least, which means
some level of exposure (at least by "social analysis" by observing the
relationships among the various remailer nyms).

Chaos within the system is good. Moving remailers around could be good,
provided that a service location infrastructure is established. Raph's
list is a good start, but it needs to be more automatic and dynamic --
which to me (perhaps wrongly) suggests formalization, which means points
of failure. 

A system whereby you post messages to a public place -- like Usenet -- to
be picked up by a random remailer whose location you do not know could be
attractive, but there's a lot that could go wrong.

I've been assured that the Cypherpunk Cabal (there is no cabal) is working
on the problem.

-rich
 "Outlay encryption, and only outlaws will have steganography."