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Anonymity use cases

2004-10-07 14:36:04

[I'm having enough trouble following these long threads that I'm going to split 
up Andy's questions and use more relevant subject lines]

At 04:16 PM 10/7/2004 -0400, Andrew Newton wrote:

On Oct 7, 2004, at 2:36 PM, Jim Fenton wrote:
There are use cases that depend on the relative anonymity that we currently 
have in the mail system, and we should preserve that behavior.

Can you elaborate the use cases that need anonymity?  It isn't that I disagree 
with this point, but that I just don't know what you are talking about.  I'm 
sitting here thinking, "As a receiver, I don't care to receive email from 
anonymous sources."

Some (hypothetical) examples I can think of are:

- An email crime-tips hotline
- A corporate or Government whistle-blower hotline
- Any of the other myriad of other reasons that people use anonymous remailers 
today.

The recent FTC Request for Comments (Federal Register, September 15, 2004) 
asked:

22. Whether any of the proposed authentication standards would impact the 
ability of consumers to engage in anonymous political speech.

This points to another reason for anonymity, and sensitivity on the part of the 
FTC to that issue.

-Jim


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