IP: Should MIT Unplug Faceless Emailer? from Telecom Digest

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 22:06:33 -0400 
From: Monty Solomon <monty () roscom COM> 
Subject: Should MIT Unplug Faceless Emailer?

By Margaret Kane, ZDNN 
April 13, 1999 4:50 PM PT
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- It's called the "re-mailer," a computer server 
that allows you to send anonymous e-mail messages. And the big 
question on Tuesday was whether the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology should pull the plug on it.
The question: Will its faceless missives allow even amateur crooks to 
plot, steal and hide? Or would they serve to protect whistle-blowers 
and human rights workers?
And so it was along that divide that re-mailer became the focus of a 
spirited debate among government and technology experts participating 
in a panel as part of the 35th anniversary celebration of the school's 
pioneering Computer Science Lab.
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2241595,00.html

[TELECOM Digest Editor: Last week did mark the 35th anniversary of 
what we call lcs.mit.edu, and heartiest congratulations are due 
the members of the staff there, especially those who have worked 
with me over the years in providing the resources for this Digest and 
the archives. The archives has always been at MIT except for a short 
stay at Boston University in the middle 1980's, even though the Digest 
itself was produced at various locations over the years including 
Boston University, Northwestern University, and, I believe for a while 
at Stanford in the early 1980's. I've been back at lcs.mit.edu since 
around 1994 or so, and in a sense sorry I did not just stay here 
all along. The connectivity is superb, the technical assistance is 
great, although I try not to bother the staff at LCS any more than 
absolutely necessary. 
In some correspondence with Mary Ann Ladd, a sysadmin at LCS regarding 
the 35th anniversary, I asked her if she ever wondered what things 
would have been like if back in 1964 we had known then what we know 
today regards networking, the internet, etc. Wow! I know how much I 
have always wished there were such things as computers when I was in 
high school ... what a blast we would have had. And considering what 
the past 35 years have brought us, what are we to expect in the next 
35 years? Imagine life with computers even in 2010, let alone 2034. It 
took years to develop computers that could be used on a telephone line 
at a speed of 110 or 300 baud. My first BBS ran at 110/300. Then 
someone developed a hardware mod for the Apple modem card which 
allowed it to 'race along' at 450 baud. After a couple years, 1200 
baud modems were available but quite expensive. Then 2400, 9600 
... and today we have a closet full of old 9600 baud modems we cannot 
give away. The jump from 300 to 9600 was only a few years, and now in 
the past four or five years 28K and 56K are 'acceptable'. I will bet 
you that by 2034 everyone -- and I mean everyone, 95 percent of the 
population or more -- will be connected via cable or LAN or something 
like that. Speeds of 115K will be the norm. Most people will simply 
talk to the computer and listen to it; there will be little typing. 
People today with massive amounts of technical knowledge regards 
computers will maybe know ten percent of what there is to know in 
total. That's how I am with telecom now; years ago I *knew* the phone 
company inside and out. Today I can barely keep up with it and know 
very little about whole segments of the industry.
Perhaps I am better off having grown up as a child with no such thing 
as a computer. Now I can really see and comprehend what it was that 
I missed and appreciate it even more, not just taking it for granted. 
And for the telecom object lesson out of all this, someone said to me 
the other day, "NOW, can you appreciate the thrill that must have 
surged through the souls of people like Alex Bell, Ted Vail and others 
at the 35th anniversary celebration of AT&T back in the early years of 
this century we are now departing? When *they* stopped to ponder the 
question of where things were leading ... " Yeah ... 
The Telephone Pioneers began around 1900 when a couple dozen of the 
people who had been with AT&T since Day One decided they should have a 
club for themselves. In later years as all the old people died, the 
rule was changed to say that members had to have at least twenty years 
of employment with Bell. I wonder if the time has come for an 'Internet 
Pioneers' organization? If enough people send me some sort of valid 
evidence that they were active on the net at least 15-20 years ago and 
express an interest in an association among themselves and a web page 
or mailing list, perhaps I will start such a thing. It might be purely 
social, or perhaps a mix of social and service to the net and the 
newcomers who are arriving -- not quite at the rate people are fleeing 
from Kosovo -- but pretty darn fast, to the net community daily. 
I got 'started in computers' -- in a personal way at home, having used 
them since 1968 where I was employed -- in 1979, when Daniel Kritchevsky 
brought me an Ohio Scientific C-1-P and then sat there patiently with 
me day after day as I learned how to use it; how to find where the 
'any' key I was supposed to press was located. The first night I had 
it, he taught me how to program a simple print statement "I am a 
computer programmer". And he said, having made the computer print that 
statement out over and over on the screen, I *was* a programmer now, 
" .. and don't you forget it .." Then someone else told me about Usenet 
and Jon Solomon taught me how internet mailing lists operate. Before 
that, I knew zilch about it. 
Shortly after that I got Bill Pfieffer started; he knew less about 
computers when he started than I did a few years before that. And in 
the time this Digest has been around, several mailing lists and newsgroups 
have started as offshoots from here including Computer Underground Digest, 
Computer Privacy Digest, alt.dcom.telecom and comp.dcom.telecom.tech. 
Daniel Kritchevsky, if you are somewhere reading this, thank you!
A good way to show your gratitude for work that has been done at places 
like MIT is getting a neighbor or friend or family member 'started in 
computers'. Make a web page for someone; teach them how to use an online 
service; sell or give them an older unused but still workable computer. 
Share with people the *good news* of what's happened with computers in 
the past 35 years; how we have no earthly idea where things will be at 
35 years from now, but that *you* want *them* to be in on it. You never 
know when your efforts might result in a new mailing list or newsgroup 
twenty years from now; or maybe the person will discover and develop 
a new technology to benefit the net. Don't worry if you do not have a 
computer science degree; most of us don't. To LCS/MIT I say thanks for 
all you have accomplished. To the rest of you I ask, who have you 
gotten started in computers recently? Thanks for reading! PAT]