New remailer concept.

[Jim Pinson <jpinson@fcdarwin.org.ec>]

It occurs to me that most people have more to fear from their 
neighbors, than they do from the powerful TLA's.    Knowing that 
you are hunting for a new job is not important to the world at 
large, but could be embarrassing if your current employer found 
out.   Likewise, the people most interested in knowing about that 
sex list you subscribe to are your coworkers.

The answer of course is encryption, but that is a problem when 
you are writing to your, well... , "crypto challenged" 
friends.   Also, two way encrypted messages to most discussion 
lists is not possible (to my knowledge).

To address these problems I suggest the creation of "crypto 
remailers".    They would work like this:

You subscribe to the remailer by sending a request including the 
account name you wish.  This could be either a real name 
(jpinson) or a pseudonym (lizard).   You would also include in 
the subscription request a copy of your public key.

Assuming there are no name collisions with existing users, you 
would get back a message of acceptance, and a copy of the 
remailers public key.

To use the remailer, you would create a message containing as the 
first line a "request remail to: USERNAME" , followed by your message.
You then encrypt the message with the remailers public key and 
send it to the "remail" account at the remailer.

The remailer then decodes the message you sent, and sends it to 
its destination as plain text.   It sets the "from" field to your 
account name on the remailer.

The recipient of your message can then reply to your remail 
account in plain text, with no need for any "remail to " commands 
or special processing.

A .forward pipe on your remailer account would run a Perl script 
to encode the message to you with your public key, and send it to 
your real address.  (for security it could set the "from" field 
to something other than your remail account name)

The advantage is that you have total protection at your end.
All mail to and from the remail account is encrypted.

You could now subscribe to lists, and receive mail from lists, 
without your local administrator knowing anything about them.  
This last feature could be useful for students at universities 
that limit access.

Is there anything like this out there already?


Jim Pinson     Charles Darwin Research Station, Galapagos