[116774] in Cypherpunks
Re: Killing the Messenger
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Fri Aug 20 15:39:55 1999
Date: Fri, 20 Aug 1999 21:18:41 +0200 (CEST)
Message-Id: <199908201918.VAA14888@mail.replay.com>
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net, rogue@nym.alias.net, mail2news@replay.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
> I have posted a first draft of an essay on attempts to discredit
> remailers, as well as some of the reasons behind it. It does not go into
> great detail, is more of a general overview of why to use remailers,
> why to discredit them, and what to do about it. It is rather short for
> such an ambitious topic, but I feel addresses it well in a concise manner.
>
> You can reach it via http://roguerebel.cjb.net/messenger.html
>
> All critiques may be sent to rogue@nym.alias.net. My public key is
> posted on the site.
This is a good essay and it makes an important point, but not quite
clearly enough:
: Enter anonymous remailers. Using them you can be sure that your messages
: are untraceable. Most people limit their thinking to sending messages
: to someone and that person not being able to identify you as the
: sender. While such anonymous speech is important it is not the only use
: for remailers. Proper use of remailers can allow two people to converse
: privately without anyone even knowing that the conversation is occuring,
: much less knowing the topic or what is said.
The point is, there are two different possible uses for remailers.
One is for anonymity, and the other is for traffic analysis protection.
The difference is that, in the second case, communicators don't try to
remain anonymous with respect to each other. They just want to stop
third parties from knowing that they are communicating.
The essay is good in mentioning this use of anonymous remailers, but it
misses the equally important point that virtually all of the opposition
to remailers has nothing to do with this use. Most people do not have
any objections whatsoever to allowing others to communicate privately.
What they object to is anonymity, especially public, obnoxious anonymity.
When remailers are used for personal attacks, for mail bombing, for
flooding newsgroups, for obscene, ignorant, or racist hate mail, that
is what makes people angry. When they are used for personal threats,
especially in personal mail and especially when they show intimate
knowledge of the person being threatened, that is what makes people
afraid. These uses of anonymity are what bring about opposition.
The question, then, is whether to distinguish between these two uses
of remailers to the point that we support one but not the other. Is it
time to say that anonymity is wrong? That, on balance, it does more harm
than good? While still maintaining that there is a role for remailers
as a mechanism for traffic analysis prevention?
Imagine a world in which all private messages travel through remailer
networks (or future improvements thereon) to foil traffic analysis.
People have filters installed so that they only accept messages which
are authenticated as coming from keys with identity certifications by
trusted certifiers. (The technology even exists to provide such filters
at the remailer itself, as was discussed in a series of messages to
cypherpunks in 1998.) Public forums can have similar filters so that
all messages are linked to a known and validated identity.
This world has no significant support for anonymous messaging, but there
is still a very high degree of privacy in terms of message contents
and message traffic. It is an extreme example to show that privacy and
anonymity are two different issues, which should be discussed separately.
Privacy is something which almost everyone supports, except those few
people who feel they must eavesdrop on others. Anonymity is far more
troublesome and prone to abuse, and should be separated as an issue.
