Re: Remop inbreeding, or, the 'kidnap Len' attack

[Adam Shostack <adam@homeport.org>]

On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 02:02:14PM -0500, Michael J. Freedman wrote:
| > At this point, the "kidnap Len attack" isn't a threat we have to really
| > worry about. At some point, it may be. Remops need to ask themselves:
| > could you make a decision to destroy your keys rather than save the life
| > of another remop? If you can't, you may want to get out of the game.
| 
| The continued strain of arguments of anon lists and cypherpunks always
| seems to presuppose that a law-enforcement agency or other organization
| which asks for information (either transcripts or your key) is
| illegally/immorally overstepping its bounds.  At the risk of (incorrectly)
| sounding as if I believe in key escrow, one of the strengths of multi-hop
| remailers and their built-in distribution of trust is that the system can
| provide a means to recover information (extractability) if unanimous
| consensus is reached.

I'm strongly with Mike.  Focusing on the evils that remailer ops may
be exposed to cuts the pool of potential ops (until Len is the only
one), and convinces the government that remailers are dangerous,
because even the folks who build and run them are convinced of that.
We all know that there are societally important uses of remailers,
including whistleblowing and protecting kids.  Lets focus on those,
and building a user base.

Adam


-- 
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
					               -Hume