Sorry guys but I have to disagree on this one. As the administrator of a
medium size (1 Million+ users) mailsystem I have many cases where we need to
be able to trace someone due to
1) SPAM (obvious)
2) email "stalking" (at least one case per month)
3) pedophilic images
4) fraud ("Nigerian" scams).
5) "simple" abuse
While in many cases this can be handled by full identification of the
ISP/relay - in many cases we need to have law enforcement quality evidence.
I agree there are circumstances where anonymity may be acceptable but in
these cases it is most definitely not.
Adrian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Len Sassaman" <rabbi(_at_)abditum(_dot_)com>
To: "Paul Lambert" <PaulLambert(_at_)AirgoNetworks(_dot_)Com>
Cc: "Hector Santos" <winserver(_dot_)support(_at_)winserver(_dot_)com>;
<mail-ng(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>
Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 6:35 PM
Subject: RE: Why are we here? What are our goals?
On Thu, 29 Jan 2004, Paul Lambert wrote:
- anonymous access" control issues.
Anonymous mail is a valuable service that should be provided by this
effort and not designed away in our fervor to eliminate spam.
-- support for anonymous transport and anonymous headers
I absolutely concur. I may be biased, being the maintainer of the
anonymous remailer software Mixmaster and the security architect for
Anonymizer, Inc., but the ability to send anonymous messages is not on my
list of problems with the current email infrastructure.
In fact, I'd go further and say that there should be better support for
anonymity protocols.
As for what I'd like to get out of this list: I'd like to see a listing of
the existing problems with email. Not things like "there's too much spam",
or "people shouldn't be anonymous", but architectural issues, such as "the
cost of mail delivery drastically skewed to be absorbed by the recipient"
and "encryption and optional sender authentication protocols are awkwardly
integrated".
--Len.