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

From: "Alan DeKok" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Oct 2003 17:13:10 -0500

Brad Knowles <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 	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).

  SMTP was designed and intended to be used in a trusted environment.
Therefore, it has no design features to prevent spam, and no design
features to help protect the lives of human rights workers.  Anyone
relying on RFC 2821 SMTP for either "feature" is fooling themselves.

> 	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.

  I guess I misunderstood:

https://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/working-groups/asrg/current/msg07714.html

  where you opposed header verification, and claimed that such
verification "will literally be responsible for the murder of tens,
hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of people,"

  I don't see hysteria as helping the discussion.

> 	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.

  You're the first one I'm aware of who has listed "saving lives of
human rights workers" as a protocol design goal of SMTP.  Maybe that
means everyone else doesn't care.  More likely, it means that everyone
else thinks it's outside of the scope of SMTP>

  Alan DeKok.

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From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2003 15:00:04 -0800

> The issue here is that accountability facilitates a web of 
> trust (or web
> of distrust) - if that ISP is known to give out anonymous 
> accounts, then
> a recipient can choose that their 'view of the internet' shouldn't
> include receiving mail from users at an ISP with that policy.

I don't care what the ISPs do to authenticate end users, all I care about is
whether they send spam or not.

I think that one of the problems with ad-hoc spam approaches is that
secondary characteristics are getting confused with causes.

Use of anonymous email accounts may be something that only appeals to geeks
but that does not mean that it is evil in and of itself, any more than using
free ISPs is bad.

		Phill