Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?

["Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>]

agree with all of BS's points...

>Anonymous remailers support several things I want to do,
>and that I want other people be able to do:
>1) Let people have private conversations without being identified
>by third parties.
>2) Let people have private conversations without being identified
>by each other, voluntarily and respecting each others' rights.
>3) Let people broadcast things to the public that they might
>be afraid to do otherwise.
>4) Let people broadcast things to the public without their
>reputations, good or bad, affecting readers' reactions.
>5) Let people experiment with different personality and
>conversation styles, though this doesn't strictly require anonymity.
>6) Let people communicate with government officials without risk.

I suspect all these items can be accomplished using means other
than anonymous remailers. anonymous remailers are a good start,
but possibly there is still technology waiting to be invented to
support some of these features.

one possibility that I'm very interested in: consider that
Usenet was not built from the ground-up to support anonymity,
nor was the sendmail system. when anonymity was introduced to
Usenet, everyone went crazy, and it was only marginally supported.

I think I may work on some technical proposals along these lines
for future posting here, because much of this dialogue has me thinking.

what cpunks might consider doing is creating an alternative message
distribution system like Usenet that starts from the premise that
anonymous communication is allowed and trying to grow it.

btw, McCullagh's and other's claims about "ghettoization" of 
anonymity strike me as very specious. as long as people can use
anonymity in some forum they want, I think that's acceptable. what's
the equivalent of a "ghetto" in cyberspace? you can't go into
a meeting of professionals wearing a ski mask, although you might
be able to create such a forum yourself. does that mean you are
in some kind of a "ghetto"?  oh, brother.