Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers

[greg@ideath.goldenbear.com (Greg Broiles)]

uunet!indial1.io.com!mentor (Loyd Blankenship) writes:

> Cpunks:
> 	We've been kicking around the pros and cons of anonymous remailers
> here at io.com. One of the big problems is anonymous bombardment of a 
> helpless newsgroup. This (and the problem of auto-screening anonymous
> mail) could be solved if there was a standard header keyword (or maybe 
> even a new header field) that could be screened from a newsgroup. The
> group would have to be semi-moderated -- an automatic filter passes on
> all posts except those with the keyword in the appropriate header field.

Some people think that "the problem of auto-screening anonymous mail" refers 
to other folks' desire to screen anonymous mail. If a significant fraction 
of the net community responds to wider access to anonymity by filtering out 
anonymous mail, my prediction (and suggestion :) is that people who truly 
(a) wish to be heard, and (b) wish to be anonymous will resort to mail which 
is non-obviously anonymous. Forging mail in the names of actual persons, and 
using bits of real names to assemble real-looking pseudonyms (say, "Perry 
Detweiler"?) would seem to be two solutions. Posters of that flavor of 
anonymous mail might or might not make it clear that the posting isn't 
actually who it purports to be from.

I think it's probably better for us to deal with this problem now, rather 
than trying to hide from it with more shell scripts. Anonymity and its 
connection with accountability, responsibility, and coercion is a social 
issue, not a technological one. Technological attempts to address that 
social issue (or ignore it) will fail.


--
Greg Broiles
greg@goldenbear.com                     Baked, not fried.