[107231] in Cypherpunks
Re: Collection of types of remailer complaints
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Wed Jan 6 18:41:35 1999
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 1999 00:12:08 +0100
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
In-Reply-To: <36976cdd.196421609@mail.uni-muenster.de>
To: potatoware.reliable@listbot.com, remailer-operators@anon.lcs.mit.edu,
cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
nightmare@uni-muenster.de wrote:
> We have got the following complaint (not anonymous):
>
> >Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
> >
> >The included message is an attempt
> >by one of your users to engage in what
> >may be a campaign of libel, slander
> >and harassment.
> >
> >Please take appropriate action to stop
> >further use of your services by this person.
> >
> >Also, this e-mail constitutes sufficient
> >notice that, if your user is in violation
> >of law, your firm could be liable for
> >criminal or civil damages should you
> >not take immediate action to stop the
> >abuse facilitated by your firm.
> >
>
> Then a copy of a plain text message follows, obviously sent via
> nitemare to a m2n-gateway to different newsgroups. However, using
> RELIABLE we don't know the origin, furthermore we don't have access to
> the NG's to watch that thread.
>
> Is there a classification of complaints and possible reactions,
> perhaps a FAQ?
> What is the appropriate reaction in this case?
> Any help would be appreciated.
The legal term for that sort of scare tactic is "in terrorem",
meaning attempting to bluff someone into doing something that you
have no legal basis to enforce in court. The person obviously has a
faulty knowledge of the law (or hopes YOU do) to allege "slander"
via a remailer, since, by definition, slander is a VERBAL tort.
(Was someone anonymously posting .wav files? <g>) This nonsense is
reminiscent of the Gary Burnore/Belinda Bryan/Billy McClatchie
attack on the Mailmasher server and Huge Cajones remailer in 1997,
and the Scientology attack even earlier.
The legal pitfall here is that once you start filtering or censoring
based upon the contents of messages, then you become legally liable
for the ones that you do permit to be sent. Burnore's strategy was
to (apparently) anonymously fabricate a certain pattern of blatant
"designer abuse" which mentioned his name and e-mail address in each
message. Of course, the proposed "solution" was to filter out any
anonymous messages mentioning Gary Burnore, DataBasix, or his e-mail
address. Conveniently, that solution would also have filtered out
any messages from one or more anonymous whistleblowers who had
successfully used remailers to warn the parents and school officials
of one of Gary's teenaged molestation victims. That score is tied.
He was convicted of the offense, placed on probation, and ordered to
register as a sex offender, but his harassment also forced the
remailer to shut down.
While "libel" is technically possible via a remailer, it's extremely
unlikely. First of all, to constitute "libel", defamatory
allegations have to be made which are also FALSE and which
measurably harm a person's reputation. And to cause that harm, they
have to be believed by someone. Few people believe negative things
that are posted anonymously, unless they can be independently
corroborated. If they can be corroborated, then they're not false
and thus not libel. And if one's reputation could be damaged in
someone's mind on the basis of mere, unsubstantiated gossip, then
it's arguable whether any real damage was done. Anyone who'd
believe unsupported gossip about you probably didn't hold you in
high esteem anyway. One additional complication is that in the case
of alleged libel against a public figure like Gary Burnore, it's
necessary to prove that the defamation was WILLFUL, which is
impossible if you can't identify the author and prove that he/she
knew the charges were false. The whole notion is akin to suing the
telephone company because an unidentifiable individual dropped some
coins into a payphone, called a live national radio or TV call-in
program, and blurted out an accusation about someone before a
producer could hit the kill switch.
The other problem is that there is no known technological means to
filter "libel" via an unattended remailer, since it would require a
script or program to test content for "truth".
The real giveaway is when people like DataBasix' Billy McClatchie
makes statements like "if the operator is so incompetent that he
can't prevent abuse, then it should be shut down", knowing full well
that such means don't reasonably exist. Since McClatchie is
presumably intelligent enough to have known that fact at the outset,
his real agenda appears to be "anti-remailer" rather than just
"anti-abuse". That's the inescapable end-result of a position that
says that the ultimate "remedy" for designer abuse, which cannot be
fully prevented by any technological means, is to shut down the
remailer.
In the case of Mailmasher, McClatchie's complaints were patently
bogus. He contended that Mailmasher was being used to forge "From:"
lines of usenet post, when Mailmasher, as a 'nym server, never
possessed that capability. After an unsuccessful campaign by
McClatchie and other DataBasix denizens to get Mailmasher's access
cut off by its upstream providers, then successful attach came.
Coincidence? An anonymous individual signed up for a Mailmasher
account and used it to post advertisements for a non-existent
"warez" CD-ROM. Then another anonymous complaint was made to the
SPA regarding this alleged "copyright violation". Not having the
resources to fight the SPA in court, he reached a settlement with
them to shut down Mailmasher. Then right after Burnore's criticisms
of Jeff Burchell's other project, the Huge Cajones remailer, a
successful "spam baiting" attack began which ultimately resulted in
Jeff shutting down that valuable resource, too.
