Re: PGP Security

["Mark M." <markm@voicenet.com>]

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On Thu, 20 Mar 1997, Igor Chudov @ home wrote:

> This is mostly addressed to jimbell: jim, it is now obvious that
> the remailer network is as weak as a 5 year old child. It cannot
> possibly withstand even mildest forms of "abuse".
> 
> Due to this fact, I question the viability of your assassination 
> politics idea as it does not seem possible to safely operate an
> assassination bot.

The fundamental problem with the current remailer network, as others have
noted before, is that it is a free service open to abuse by anyone.  If
remailers were commercialized, this would eliminate the spam problem and would
provide the remailer operator with resources to legally defend him or herself.
Currently, there is no modivation for an operator to continue the service when
legally threatened.

(As an interesting sidenote, a few hours ago John Perry announced on r-ops
that due to an FBI investigation into the use of his remailer to mail threats
to some apparently influential person, he has shut down the jpunix remailer.)

Consider the fact that Cyberpromo has managed to find an upstream provider
willing to provide connectivity to them, even though they are almost
universally hated by net users.  They have been able to exist because there
is a commercial interest.  I do not doubt that the same would be true for
remailers if they were commercialized.  The only thing that could shut
remailers down would be either legislation or seizing the computers on which
the remailers run as "evidence."  The obvious solution to this would be to run
remailers in more civilized countries.


Mark


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