Re: making mail traceable

On Monday, January 19, 2004, at 03:03  PM, Keith Moore wrote:

> I'm interested in solving a problem, not in trying to make the US 
> government look good.  Now if it turns out that, by some accident or 
> divine intervention, CANSPAM really does turn out to be useful, that's 
> fine with me.  But it doesn't seem wise to depend on it working.
If you believe that CANSPAM might be merely "useless" then I think you 
are a wild-eyed optimist.  This isn't primarily about doing good -- 
although that would be nice -- it's about mitigating damage.  You're in 
for a rude awakening when the government starts regulating the contents 
of your sendmail.cf file.
> I think some of us who understand the complexities should try to play 
> a constructive role by solving the problem as best as we can - but 
> that doesn't include taking direction from a technically inept, 
> parochial legislative body, that is easily swayed by direct marketing 
> proponents into acting contrary to the public interest.
I'm not advocating your taking direction from anyone, Keith.  I'm 
proposing that we put our heads together and give them the best 
*advice* we can collectively come up with on *how* to do some things 
they are determined to do one way or another.
> I believe the least harmful way of doing this is to provide 
> traceability in such a way that government intervention isn't needed 
> to solve most of the spam problem.
Sounds perfect.  Unfortunately the train has left the station -- the 
government *is* intervening, and we'd better be prepared to suggest a 
strategy for them, or they'll do something unnecessarily stupid, I 
promise.  While we discuss these issues, the Beltway traffic is snarled 
by software vendors pitching spam "solutions" to the feds.   I'm sure 
some of them are much worse than others; it would help if the ietf 
could provide a guiding vision.  (But then again, I'm not sure I know 
why I would expect the ietf-822 list to succeed where the ASRG has 
failed, alas.)  -- Nathaniel