Subject: RE: [Asrg] More clueless spam bounces

From: Troy Rollo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 08:30:10 +1100

At 05:15 29/03/03 -0800, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
>Since you are presenting yourself as the self appointed 'executive
>director' of what purports to be an international lobbying group
>on the subject

Clue 1: I was not self-appointed. I was asked to fill the role - I'd rather 
somebody else have done it, but so be it. In fact I'm pretty sure the 
constitution on the web site explains how the appointment is made. (By the 
way, I only include that information in my signature here for context and 
disclosure).

>  you might want to think about your obnoxious
>behavior.

Clue 2: Glass houses. (Actually I figured this was why you didn't call me 
rude to begin with, but I guess you're less enlightened about yourself than 
I previously thought - at least I *know* I'm rude at times).

>In particular you might just find that the people you
>are needlessly antagonizing might have some influence.

Clue 3: Don't overestimate your own importance.

>Hint, who
>do you think had the idea of a Whitehouse web site in the first
>place?

Clue 4: Who cares? Namedropping is the last refuge of the insecure and 
self-important, but of course I didn't need you to do this to realise this 
about you, since you have also been known use membership affiliation 
letters after your name, which is a similar indicator.

> >Furthermore, he consistently pushes as "the only solution",
> > something that
> > would (if it were even a desirable approach or possible to implement)
> > generate more revenue for his employer.

>Completely untrue, I have pushed every solution except for those
>that create as many problems as they try to solve.

I apologise for saying that you were pushing this as the "only" solution - 
it was based on a single statement of yours that, when viewed in the 
context of the whole, has a different character to my initial take. However 
I do think the substance is fair in that you do seem to turn up on mailing 
lists whenever there is the possibility of profit to your employer to 
promote solutions that would yield that profit. This behaviour would not be 
inconsistent with the belief that part of your job description is to do 
exactly that.

In fact you have even used marketing speak - about the "reasonable rates" 
Verisign offers.

>... Troy initiated the insults with his
>deliberately insulting bounce message...

I'm sorry you feel personally slighted by a bounce message that relates to 
your domain being a repeated source of spam, but I fail to understand 
taking offence at an automated message which, in 99.9% of cases it would 
have been activated, is entirely accurate.

>...The
>reason for the blacklisting is irrelevant, Troy has sent
>five emails to my _personal_ email inbox but does not feel
>inclined to accept mail from me.

That's rude, not clueless. I admit to being rude, deal with it.

In any event, I try to avoid off-list copies unless:

         (1) the message I am replying to had off-list copies; and
         (2) The message retains some relevance to the people who
             are being copied.

Of course this doesn't always occur, but I wouldn't interpret the sending 
of a private copy of an on-list message to mean any personal intention to 
send a private copy.

>Secondly, yes inaniate objects can be described as clueless.
>Most inanimate objects are clueless.

If you want to travel down that path, all inanimate objects are clueless, 
so the comment is utterly redundant unless intended to be directed at the 
most proximate human actor.

>Ad Hominem was and
>is accepted as a valid argument for accepting purely factual
>statements that cannot be assesed in any other way.

True, however yours was not such a case.

Kee Hinkley wrote:
>Since you obviously don't give a damn as to whether Phillip has anything 
>worthwhile to say--being blinded by the twelve letters to the left of his 
>at-sign.

Actually, I have been (to the degree reasonable on such a high volume list) 
paying attention to what he has to say. However I assume that if he has 
something to say that is worth reading it will be said on-list.

>I'd consider the motive of earning money for Verisign--even if 
>true--potentially far more compatible with the goals of this list than yours.

Well there we'll have to differ - like many, I consider anything that gives 
more power (or even revenue) to Verisign is a bad thing.

But of course I also consider anything that sacrifices the availability of 
anonymity in email to be a bad thing.
--
Troy Rollo				Chairman, CAUBE.AU
[email-masked]			Executive Director, iCAUCE

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---

From: J C Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 15:00:19 -0800

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003 08:30:10 +1100 
Troy Rollo <[email-masked]> wrote:

> But of course I also consider anything that sacrifices the
> availability of anonymity in email to be a bad thing.

Please clarify.  Do you limit that to human identity, or both human and
network identity?  

I largely suspect that the problem per se can't be handled until/unless
we have full audit trails which can be tracked backward to the point
where a given message entered the "mail network".  The trust metrics
involved can be pretty soft -- the primary NO GO zone for me is removing
the autonomous decentralised peer-to-peer nature of SMTP, or its
store-and-forward characteristics.  I'd like to preserve deliberate
anonymity, but I'm willing for those cases to be clearly visible (big
flashing neon signs, "THE AUTHOR MADE THIS ANONYMOUS" etc).

-- 
J C Lawrence                
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. 
[email-masked]               He lived as a devil, eh?		  
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.
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From: Troy Rollo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 09:20:28 +1100

>Please clarify.  Do you limit that to human identity, or both human and

That would be human identity - network anonymity is (currently) problematic 
except in reasonably controlled situations (like anonymous relays, which 
can deal with the worst of the problems, but tend to be inconvenient for 
casual use).

Having said that, it may be that as things progress and it becomes more 
common for the network identity to be capable of being associated with the 
human identity, then this needs to be also capable of being treated 
anonymously, or at least of limiting the externally visible identity so 
that a person is identifiable only as somebody in a reasonably large group.
--
Troy Rollo				Chairman, CAUBE.AU
[email-masked]			Executive Director, iCAUCE

---

From: J C Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 16:31:22 -0800

On Sun, 30 Mar 2003 09:20:28 +1100 
Troy Rollo <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> On Sun, 30 Mar 2003 08:30:10 +1100 Troy Rollo <[email-masked]>
>> wrote:

>> Please clarify.  Do you limit that to human identity, or both human
>> and network identity?

> That would be human identity - network anonymity is (currently)
> problematic except in reasonably controlled situations (like anonymous
> relays, which can deal with the worst of the problems, but tend to be
> inconvenient for casual use).

Gotcha.

> Having said that, it may be that as things progress and it becomes
> more common for the network identity to be capable of being associated
> with the human identity, then this needs to be also capable of being
> treated anonymously, or at least of limiting the externally visible
> identity so that a person is identifiable only as somebody in a
> reasonably large group.

Okay, so at what level do those anonymising methods need to be
implemented?  Should they be generic and wide spread, endemic to the
protocol stack as it were (and is now), or, like for instance the
current mixmaster setup, is it acceptable if there is a fairly limited
number of methods of anonymising mail, which requires some hoop jumping,
but if those hoops are jumped the mail is efficiently (and obviously)
anonymous?

My temptation is to make anonymous mail difficult but not impossible,
and in particular to explicitly limit the number of vectors by which
anonymous mail can enter the network while being recognised as,
"acceptable".  More simply I suspect it would be a Good Thing if we
removed (almost) all possibility of accidental/unintentional anonymous
mail, leaving the forms that are truly anonymous both deliberate and
limited.

---

From: Brad Templeton <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2003 17:50:12 -0800

> mail, leaving the forms that are truly anonymous both deliberate and

Would it not be sufficient simply to assure anonymous mail can not be
sent in large volumes?   That is what most anonymous remailers do to avoid
being used as spam gateways today.
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From: J C Lawrence <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2003 00:04:15 -0800

On Sat, 29 Mar 2003 17:50:12 -0800 

> sent in large volumes?  

Is that the function of a protocol definition, or of policy and
configuration at a protocol-supporting node?

> That is what most anonymous remailers do to avoid being used as spam
> gateways today.

Quite, and rather my point.