Re: Minneapolis Star Tribune this morning (fwd)

[gimonca@skypoint.com (Charles Gimon)]

Forwarded message:
> 
> Charles Gimon wrote:
> > Mpls. Strib did a piece this morning, front page, about AltaVista,
> > Dejanews, etc. Well-worn territory to readers of this list. Your
> > words can come back to haunt you, all that stuff. One paragraph that
> > deserves rebuttal from those of you who are better-informed:
> > 
> > "Of course, technology is working on solutions to itself, but
> >    mechanisms that would hide the name of a message's author, such as
> >    cryptography and anonymous remailers, are convoluted and incomplete."
> 
> Rebuttal? Why?  Remailers generally are.  There aren't enough penet.fi 
> type remailers, which people prefer not only because there is a mapping 
> but because it's easier to use.  (It's also a bit more secure if there
> are c2-nym remailers mapped to penet.fi type remailers in various
> countries).
> 
> Not everyone is on a system that is PGP-friendly.  Handling PGP-messages
> from commercial services or even most mailer apps is awkward at best,
> and the commands for mixmaster/c'punk remailers are not as standard as
> they could be.  (A PGP3 DLL would improve the use of crypto and anon-
> remailers quite a bit.)
> 
> From the excerpt you posted, it doesn't seem as if they were criticizing
> remailers... which is a pretty good thing.
> 
I'd rate the whole article as neither good nor bad. It was on the front
page of the paper edition, so I was a little unhappy at an offhand remark
that might discourage people from using remailers. 

I'm planning on doing the letters-to-the-editor thing, emphasis on saying
good things about remailers.

The whole article is online at the site mentioned.

> > 
> > Author was Jonathan Gaw; no e-mail address given. Star Tribune Online
> > is at http://www.startribune.com
>