Re: Why are we here? What are our goals?

"Paul Lambert" <[email protected]> writes:
> Anonymous mail is a valuable service that should be provided by this
> effort and not designed away in our fervor to eliminate spam.

Email currently provides NEITHER sufficient information for secure
authentication, NOR sufficient anonymity for secure untraceability.
The current state of affairs is no good to anyone except spammers.

A replacement should provide BOTH secure authentication AND room for
secure anonymity mechanisms.

In fact, secure authentication SUPPORTS anonymity - I can make a
public key for "Captain Guarded", and if I can route information to
you through an anonymizing channel (eg onion routing), you can verify
that all messages are coming from the sender you know as "Captain
Guarded" without knowing any real-world information about them.
Certainly this is true if you think of authentication in an SPKI way
rather than a X.509 way.

If we want anonymity and spam resistance then secure authentication is
vital.

APOLOGIES for the random use of CAPITAL LETTERS.  UN-altered
REPRODUCTION...
-- 
  __  Paul Crowley
\/ o\ [email protected]
/\__/ http://www.ciphergoth.org/