I have a dream - the ideal newsreader
The Watcher
news:200206211328....@cryptofortress.com...
: You missed out the issues that make use of PGP that little more difficult.
: Key management and secure passphrases. I do not believe these aspects of
: *secure* communications can be made any more simple than they are without
: making them open to exploits. These are also the areas where you find out
: that your AIU is lazy, heck! look at people who actively use remailers, a
: large percentage would appear to rely on third parties to collect keys for
: them.
I think that the problem goes a lot deeper than that. The fact is that
computers aren't easy *at all* for many people and the vast majority of
users feel that they've accomplished something by being able to send email
and smurf the net in the first place. Unless the software giants make
privacy a priority by integrating it seamlessly with commercial client
software then it will never become as common as it should be. Most people
are still blissfully unaware of the privacy issues at all. I don't think
it's fair to criticise anyone for that. Most people are still justifiably
more preoccupied with their jobs and families to spend more than a couple
of hours a week doing the most basic things the internet is capable of.
As for obtaining remailer keys from third party sources, I have to say
you're being a little unfair there too - and unnecessarily purist in my
opinion. Each and every one of us has to take a bit of a leap of faith when
we trust our anonymity to any remailer, especially the first in the chain,
or the last in the reply block. None of us know the people who run them and
I can't for the life of me see why I should trust a key obtained directly
from (for example) orange more than orange's key obtained from farout; the
remailer good enough to provide the stats I rely on.
: So, whilst I'd like a news/mail client that handled things the way you
: suggest, I still doubt that there would be a significant increase in
: remailer users if such existed.
You've probably guessed; I don't agree ;-) To be honest, I think the same
argument applies to the use of anti-virus software and firewalls. Privacy
and on-line protection etc. have to be addressed at the point of sale and
should not rely on the particular interests or technical capabilities (let
alone the personal time available) of the users. I honestly believe that
the fact that there are only 1500 NAN subscribers speaks volumes for the
public profile, ease of use and availability of privacy software - and not
necessarily of people's laziness.
[And on a totally unrelated note, I can't believe the amount of spam I'm
getting lately. Password decrypting get rich quick offers is enough to put
anyone off for life.]
Doc and the rest of you; you're doing a fine job thanks :-)
-----------
The Watcher:
Zax
> You missed out the issues that make use of PGP that little more
> difficult. Key management and secure passphrases. I do not believe
> these aspects of *secure* communications can be made any more simple
> than they are without making them open to exploits.
to use, but requires a little effort on the part of the user to learn how.
Subsequently, the users of PGP are in general, people who have a real
requirement for it.
The same can be said of the remailer network: If every email client had a
tick box to say, "Send Anonymously", then the network would be a dead duck
in no time. It was never intended to handle that sort of a loading.
st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk
(Ross McGillic) wrote:
>My opinion is that *everybody* really needs the opportunity to be
>anonymous when he posts a message; it's part of knowing you can say
>anything, no matter how unpopular, without getting clobbered, either
>by the government, or by some form of social ostracism; and being able
>to do that is part of having some human dignity, in my opinion.
>Anything the developers can do to make it easy enough for the AIU to
>gain entry to the encrypted message club is a good thing.
>
Newsgroups that are used a lot by anonymous posters get selectively
filtered and then abandoned completely. I've seen two once popular
newsgroups deteriorate into chaos because too many off topic messages
from nameless people took them over. Many people don't read anonymous
messages and some filter them out completely.
Steve
--
Steve Wolstenholme
EasyNN. The easy way to build neural networks.
http://www.easynn.com
Frog-Admin
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk wrote:
>Newsgroups that are used a lot by anonymous posters get selectively
>filtered and then abandoned completely. I've seen two once popular
>newsgroups deteriorate into chaos because too many off topic messages
>from nameless people took them over. Many people don't read anonymous
>messages and some filter them out completely.
In apas, it is just the opposite.
The two worse trolls insist on posting under their name.
They were so bad that I had to start a news server
carrying only apas
filtering the trolls/floods at server's level
so that under-equipped newbies would have a way
to escape their rants and not have to download their messages.
WebToNews:
http://frogadmin.yi.org/cgi-bin/dnewsweb.exe
NewsServer:
frogadmin.yi.org :119
Frog's Support for News
http://frogadmin.yi.org/News
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Zax
> On 21 Jun 2002, Zax <fle...@bananasplit.info> wrote:
>>Doc.Cypher wrote:
>>> You missed out the issues that make use of PGP that little more
>>> difficult. Key management and secure passphrases. I do not believe
>>> these aspects of *secure* communications can be made any more simple
>>> than they are without making them open to exploits.
>>I think PGP is nicely balanced in terms of user-friendliness. It is
>>easy to use, but requires a little effort on the part of the user to
>>learn how. Subsequently, the users of PGP are in general, people who
>>have a real requirement for it.
>
> You seem to think there is a natural selection at work, leaving
> encryption in the hands, as it should be, of those who 'really' need
> it.
>
> My opinion is that *everybody* really needs the opportunity to be
> anonymous when he posts a message; it's part of knowing you can say
> anything, no matter how unpopular, without getting clobbered, either
> by the government, or by some form of social ostracism; and being able
> to do that is part of having some human dignity, in my opinion.
> Anything the developers can do to make it easy enough for the AIU to
> gain entry to the encrypted message club is a good thing.
I agree with what you say, but I still believe that PGP is as easy as it
needs to be. It's free, it's not rocket science to learn and it's well
documented. IMO, it therefore fulfils all the neccessary criteria for
anyone to use it providing that take the trouble to learn how.
If I was going to express a dream such as yours, I would make it that PGP
was so widely used that I could reject any email that wasn't signed with
a valid signature. Hopefully then I wouldn't spend half my day deleting
junk mail. :)
>
>
>>
>>The same can be said of the remailer network: If every email client
>>had a tick box to say, "Send Anonymously", then the network would be
>>a dead duck in no time. It was never intended to handle that sort of a
>>loading.
>
> My guess is that if the demand existed, the remailer network would
> expand to accommodate it; or one of the giants, finally seeing the $$,
> would come out with his version of the end-to-end encryption Dream
> newsreader and a dedicated server for $5/month.
You could be right about the way the network would expand, but that in
itself would create problems. The number of required remailer pings
would increase, broken chains would crop up with much greater frequency,
end users would have to collect many more keys and also maintain them.
As for the corporate giant theory: We all put a lot of faith in remailer
operators and the nature of the network means we have to do that to a
degree or not post anonymously. I have no problem with that trust whilst
the network is operated by enthusiasts who do it for a hobby and to
provide a service. But I don't think I would extend that same trust to a
corporate body who were in it for the cash.
It is a nice dream though. :)
Thomas J. Boschloo
> On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, st...@tropheus.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
> >Newsgroups that are used a lot by anonymous posters get selectively
> >filtered and then abandoned completely. I've seen two once popular
> >newsgroups deteriorate into chaos because too many off topic messages
> >from nameless people took them over. Many people don't read anonymous
> >messages and some filter them out completely.
>
> In apas, it is just the opposite.
> The two worse trolls insist on posting under their name.
That is not very nice of you to say.
> They were so bad that I had to start a news server
> carrying only apas
Making the group 'moderated' in a way.
> filtering the trolls/floods at server's level
The _anonymous_ floods which are destroying APAS from time to time. (it
is funny that in order to filter them, you almost have to rely on
filtering on the two 'trolls' you worry so much about, it seems that you
either have a big fan or you are in love with your own ideas).
> so that under-equipped newbies would have a way
> to escape their rants and not have to download their messages.
Just show me one message where I or Champerty rant newbies. Just looking
at google will show that you are the largest abuser of this group with
your endless stats and weather reports (imagine all 40 remailers posting
four messages a day, you get the point..). Though you seem to be
improving over the last few months, being more helpful and generally
less rude to newbies that you don't like (though
<S87P5MRK3742...@Nyarlatheotep-frog.org> seemed a bit rude to
me).
Here I am, replying to the worst troll in the group. I guess people must
think that I am a troll also..
To Ross, it seems you missed the existance of the Freedom Network when
it was still active (USD 50 a year). It had anonymous news, e-mail, http
and irc/telnet. Three hop, strong encryption. Have a look at
<www.zks.net> and see if any historic info is left there.. (you can also
take a look at freedom.net e-mail addresses with google to show you that
the abuse was minor compared to most other 'providers').
Note that the remailer network as it is now is very easy to flood by
bouncing messages between lots of remailers (mixmaster allows 20 hops,
cypherpunk indefinite). So it would be easy to create a flood ten times
as large as your internet connection allows (and set up a false bounce
address at the end of the chain to annoy non-middleman remops).
Also, Script-Kiddie has shown since 1999 or something that it is
possible to drown legimit anonymous speech in random crap without a way
to filter it (unless you know of the flood beforehand). So Steve's point
still stands. Personally I think the remailer network would have been a
lot less abused if there where no windows (or at least Visual Basic) GUI
clients for it. I shudder to think what would happen if your dream
software became a reality.. At least we would need a lot of hashcash and
better remailer protocols (e.g. distributed) for that to work.
Some remailers on ADSL are maxed out as it is. Scaling beyond that would
mean the kind of connections that big internet providers use for their
e-mail (SMTP/POP3). No normal user can afford this.
Thomas
--
Alec Empire: "I don't care what anyone does to our records, I just don't
want to be looking at it"
My personal trollpage <http://home.hccnet.nl/t.j.boschloo/>
Nomen Nescio
>On Sat, 22 Jun 2002, Secure Beer <secur...@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>
>>
>>Why not let user's decide what they want to read in Usenet
>>and encourage them to learn user-end solutions like kill filters?
>
>Because users don't want to use kill filters. They don't like the idea
>of psychopaths trying to disrupt the groups they post in; they would
>not be happy if the psychos were parading up and down their street,
>shouting obscenities; they wouldn't think the best thing would be to
>close the windows so the shouting wasn't so obvious. They would want
>the psychos out of their neighborhood.
>
>You may not like that attitude, but if the people in newsgroups are
>going to be bombarded with the crap that you would allow through the
>remailers, then they are going to put pressure on the lawmakers to 'do
>something' about those nasty remailers.
>
>If a remop isn't willing to at least listen to the complaints he gets
>about this post or that post, and be willing to block certain posters
>or even newsgroups, then he is irresponsible and shouldn't be running
>a remailer.
>
>
>>
>>Instead of protecting unpopular speech, the raison d'etre of
>>remailer operation, you censor it in the most petty and self-
>>serving fashion.
>
>Or maybe in a commonsense way. And Frog's censoring of the obnoxious
>posts - the kind of posts that will result in a backlash against
>remailers, *is* protecting unpopular speech, because otherwise, there
>will be no remailer system.
>
>
>>You are well on your way to single-handedly
>>ruining the remailer network (your intention, perhaps).
>
>What rubbish. Frog isn't in a position to single-handedly do anything,
>except to give a lot of help to newbies, and add a much-needed fourth
>gateway, as well as a flood-free apas. Not bad for somebody out to
>ruin the remailer network.
Once you understand that Boschloo and Champerty are remailer-haters,
their actions make perfect sense:
-disrupt the nework
-disrupt the newsgroup
-give technically wrong information
-badmouth remops and developers
-try to ignite fight between people
-push remops to do stupid things
-frighten newbies
..