I'm going to avoid the "right to privacy" and "freedom of the net"
discussions for the nonce.  I'd like to address a more fundamental
question.
 
>From: "John W. Redelfs" <[log in to unmask]>
 
>On the other hand, the technology doesn't stay still, does it?  What
>is impossible today, may be entirely possible tomorrow.  I have done
>some reading about encryption and anonymous posting.  It seems to me
>that utilizing encryption AND anonymous posting SOME degree of privacy
>could be achieved, keeping in mind that perfect privacy never exists
>offline either.
 
I'm glad that *someone* realizes that privacy cannot be guaranteed.
In most cases, notably the store-and-forward schemes, confidentiality
cannot be assured either.......of course, I can turn on my Network General
Sniffer in the back room and capture every packet that crosses my net-
work backbone.  There are several *public domain* software packages that
convert PCs into such monitors; someone could be recording my keystrokes
as I type this, and I'd never know it. (I've discovered users doing this
very thing -- we can't assume that they'll all be ethical)
 
>Without privacy, free speech and free assembly are meaningless
>concepts.  How about it?  Is the limiting factor the technology or the
>prejudices of the people involved?
 
I think that the bigger issue is one that most participants in this dis-
cussion have not considered, namely:
 
        Can the current network support anonymous/pseudonymous work
        *with the proper respect* for anonymity/pseudonymity?
 
I say that it cannot. I say this for several reasons:
 
        - Almost *anyone* can monitor a local network. (the PC net
          monitoring software described above)
 
        - Most real-time traffic from a given site goes through a single
          point of control to reach the 'outside world'.  There's another
          opportunity for monitoring and violation of confidentiality. My
          site, for example, gateways into SURANet; I wouldn't be surprised
          if our gateway saw every bit of traffic flying across the SURANet
          backbone.  If your local firewall/gateway has acutal users (as
          opposed to a standalone system), they could conceivably see
          every piece of email flying through the gateway.....
 
        - Electronic mail is not necessarily a point-to-point channel.  Your
          message may sit in a mail queue on your local machine; that's an
          opportunity for loss of confidentiality. (without even reading the
          message itself, depending on the information provided in mail
          logs)  On some systems, *any* user can list the messages in
          the email queue.  If the message cannot be delivered directly,
          it will sit in similar queues at several other systems before
          reaching its destination.  I've seen email messages (and Usenet
          postings) that travelled through 12-15 systems before reaching me.
 
        - Almost *any* email administrator (or list owner, for that
          matter) can examine messages in the queue. 'Nuff said.
 
        - In some cases, queues can be examined by third parties. (other
          than the aforementioned administrators)  For instance, I can
          retrieve quite a bit of information about queued BITNET files,
          even if they were not sent from (or destined to reach) my site.
          (At one time, it was possible to examine the headers of queued
          RSCS files on other systems, which revealed the sending and des-
          tination addresses; this may no longer be possible.)
 
        - Most electronic mail systems return "bounced mail" messages when
          email cannot be delivered.  Most of these messages, in turn, in-
          clude the headers of the failed message and the content of the
          message itself.
 
        - Of course, all multi-user computer systems are (almost by definition)
          insecure.  If someone breaches security on a system, they probably
          have access to everything on the system.  'Nuff said.
 
If you want to entrust your anonymity/confidentiality to such a large
audience spread over (possibly) dozens of sites, I guess you can do so;
*I* wouldn't trust "network anonymity" as far as I could throw it.  (I
wonder what a "bounced mail" message from an anonymous service reveals.)
 
In conclusion, I do not believe that the current network structure can
properly support anonymity/pseudonymity.  Those who maintain that it can
do so are merely fooling themselves; this false sense of privacy (or
security, or confidentiality) should not be encouraged.  The foremost
rule of electronic communications is still, in my opinion, the first rule
taught to me:
 
        Never entrust anything to electronic communications that you
        would not wish to see in your local newspaper.
 
At a minimum, I would use encryption techniques on *every* anonymous
or pseudonymous message.  I've seen postings using PGP and other public
key schemes; that's a step in the right direction.  Plaintext *cannot*
be considered secure or confidential in today's network environment; no
'alias server' or third-party email forwarding can provide the level of
privacy/confidentiality you want.
 
--Wes