Re: The Crisis with Remailers

[lcs Mixmaster Remailer <mix@anon.lcs.mit.edu>]

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> not!!! I should have made this clear, but imho no matter how favorably
> the public sees anonymity, I still believe there will be little
> incentive to run remailers until there is some kind of ecash
> scheme.

I hope this is not true.  Some of us simply believe it is important to
help people with unpopular opinions speak without fear of harassment.
I for one will continue to operate a free remailer even if the
technology becomes available to charge for the service.  I hope others
will, too.

Some people do care about things other than money.  I hope the reason
there aren't more remailers out there is simply that it is sort of a
pain to set one up, rather than simply because nobody cares.

> >People seem to forget that anyone can drop a letter into the mailbox with
> >no return address. Did the Unabomber bring negative publicity to the 
> >postal service, causing people to demand that return addresses become a 
> >requirement? :-/
> 
> agreed, but the subject at hand was not whether anonymity is good or bad, 
> but whether there is some incentive to run remailers.

Well, wanting there to be remailers is a good incentive to run one.
Another good incentive is if you ever want to send a truly sensitive
anonymous message.  If you chain through your own remailer, then you
can be absolutely sure that at least one remailer in your chain is not
run by "bad guys."

> I would be interested if any longtime remailer operators posted
> statistics about the amount of mail going through their services.

Usage statistics are publicly available from mixmaster remailers by
sending mail with subject "remailer-stats".  Whenever I've checked,
the number of messages through the lcs mixmaster remailer has been
around 300/day.  This is neither a longtime remailer nor a
particularly accurate statistic, but it should give you some idea.

mix-admin@anon.lcs.mit.edu

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