Subject: Re: 3. Requirements - Anonimity (was Re: FW: [Asrg] 0. General)

From: Brad Knowles <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 00:29:52 +0700

At 5:02 PM -0400 2003/10/24, Alan DeKok wrote:

>    As I understand the RMX-style proposals, they do not remove any
>  anonymity.  They add accountability, but only under the mutual consent
>  of the message originator and recipient.  If the sender does not wish
>  to be accountable, they can choose to not send messages to the
>  recipient.

	If you don't want to be held accountable for telling the world 
about SARS II, you can choose not to speak.

	Sounds like a solution the Chinese government would love.

>    As was pointed out earlier, the "human rights activist" isn't
>  randomly spamming people.  Instead, (s)he's sending targeted messages
>  to people who want to receive them.  Mutual consent exists, so any
>  anonymity, privace, and accountability issues become whatever the two
>  parties agree to.

	How many recipients in this world have total control over the 
mail system that they use?  If the operator of their mail system 
chooses to filter all their mail through the Chinese government, what 
choice do they have?

-- 
Brad Knowles, <[email-masked]>

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
     -Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania.

GCS/IT d+(-) s:+(++)>: a C++(+++)$ UMBSHI++++$ P+>++ L+ !E-(---) W+++(--) N+
!w--- O- M++ V PS++(+++) PE- Y+(++) PGP>+++ t+(+++) 5++(+++) X++(+++) R+(+++)
tv+(+++) b+(++++) DI+(++++) D+(++) G+(++++) e++>++++ h--- r---(+++)* z(+++)

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg

---

From: Brad Knowles <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 00:21:35 +0700

At 4:48 PM -0400 2003/10/24, Alan DeKok wrote:

>    My concern is that I don't see a requirement that SMTP should solve
>  all of the worlds problems.  I understand that SMTP should not
>  *remove* peoples privacy and anonymity.  But there is no requirement
>  (and there SHOULD be no requirement) that SMTP creates privacy and
>  anonymity, where there was none before.

	The problem is that the SMTP protocol exists, and in its current 
form, there are a number of "features" which can be extracted.  We're 
here to try to address some of these "features", which have 
manifested themselves as spam.  However, there are other groups in 
the world that have become dependant on some of these features (which 
may or may not overlap with the "spam" features).

	If we're going to talk about changing the SMTP protocol, or how 
we recommend that people administrate their mail servers which 
operate under the SMTP protocol, we need to be aware of these other 
uses of the protocol, and we need to be explicit in how our suggested 
changes may impact these other uses.

>    Further, I believe that the emotional appeal to human rights workers
>  is inappropriate in a professional forum.  Arguments of the form "If
>  you're for proposal X, then you're for killing people!" should be
>  explicitly outside of the scope of ASRG.

	I didn't say "If you're for proposal X, then you're for killing 
people!"  That is an unwarranted and inappropriate mis-representation 
of my statement.

	What I said was "Would you be willing to bet your life on that?" 
This is a very different statement.

	We're talking about making changes to the SMTP protocol (or the 
implementation thereof) which could have a profound effect on the 
lives of people around the world.

	Many people's lives could literally be at stake here, and no one 
has given any consideration to how they could be affected by the 
kinds of things we're talking about.