[118090] in Cypherpunks
Databasix conspiracy theories, YAWN
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Sun Sep 19 17:37:57 1999
Date: Sun, 19 Sep 1999 23:02:20 +0200 (CEST)
Message-Id: <199909192102.XAA07018@mail.replay.com>
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
On Sun, 19 Sep 1999 03:50:53 +0200 (CEST), in article <199909190150.DAA19807@mail.replay.com>, Anonymous <nobody@replay.com> wrote:
>Now read about someone (and his wife-to-be) who, in R/L, succeeded
>in harassing a remailer operator until he finally shut it down:
>
> http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.97.11.13-97.11.19/msg00431.html
Okay, let's take a careful look at that article:
Jeff explains why he shut down the remailer:
"And frankly, I already have enough to do, and get enough mail on a
daily basis (at last check it was hovering around 600 messages/day).
As soon as the remailer started taking up a lot of my time, it became
time to rethink why I was running it. The moment that the spam-baiter
started alerting people who had been baited, and telling them to
contact me, it became personal. And I don't have time to get into
personal pissing-contests. Yes, I took the easy way out, but that
was my choice to make."
He shut it down because it took up too much time.
He also admits that there WAS an attack going on and he didn't know who was doing it:
"Actually, not even I know the whole story. If I truely knew who it was
that was orchestrating this attack, it would have stopped, one way or
another."
He then says he doesn't feel the filters he employed were content filters:
"Because the filters were looking for a specific form of ABUSE, and not
just doing basic pattern matches, I don't consider them to be "content
filters". I would think that just about anyone would agree that
posting lists of email addresses to mlm newsgroups would qualify
as abuse, and _should_ be blocked. Blocking of this nature does NOT
restrict free speech (or at least that is not the intentions of it), and
it would keep the remailer out of lawsuit territory.
Alert readers will note that you have consistently accused Burchell of content-based filtering, claiming that he acceded to Burnore's demands to remove any post containing his (Burnore's) name.
Next, he explains how the abuse of his remailer was causing him grief:
"See, the big problem with lawsuits is not the fact that _I_ don't want
to be sued. The problem is that anyone with half a brain can determine
that Wired is somehow related to any remailer that I am running on their
bandwidth. Wired has deeper pockets than Mr. Burchell, so they are a
much better group to sue... and they are a lot more willing to give
in to a threat than I am."
And here we have another statement by Jeff that he didn't know who else was involved:
Beware... all of this is speculation, because huge.cajones was an
anonymous service, not even I can say with any authority that any
of the people named below had anything to do with the shutdown of
huge.cajones (or The MailMasher). However, there are a number of
coincidences of timing.
Anyone who's ever used a remailer knows that timing *is* only coincidental. Remailer reliability, the ability to add time delays, etc mean *any* timing issues *must* be coincidental.
Here, he admits that someone was spam-baiting databasix addresses. You've said on many occasions that there was no spam-baiting. Either you're lying or Jeff is and I know which one of you I believe. (Hint: it's the one who's been a demonstrated asset to the remailer community):
"Between the time he first contacted me, and the time I received the
letter from Belinda Bryan, is when the baiting of databasix addresses
began (slowly, with just a few posts)."
Jeff refuses to defend the practice of spam-baiting:
"I can't claim to have done _everything_ that I could have done, but I
did certainly make an effort. I'm not willing to go to court to defend
a practice like spam-baiting (and given the current public-opinion
situation and impending anti-UCE legislation, this would be a terrible
test-case)."
Now it gets humorous:
"I am not new to threats of lawsuit, even ones that come from legitimate
lawyers. About 8 months previous, I was threatened repeatedly by the
legal wing of the "Church" of Scientology. I answered with a letter
from my lawyer that explained the policies of the remailer, and
threatened a harrassment lawsuit if the "Church" contacted me again asking
for information (that they now knew I didn't have) about a remailer user.
They complied, and went away (and haven't been too difficult with
other remailer operators lately)."
So Jeff Burchell told the Church of $cientology and their notoriously sue-happy lawyers to bugger off but closed down shop after a letter from someone who isn't even a lawyer? He withstood 'repeated threats' from the censorious thugs who took down anon.penet.fi but gave up when Burnore's girlfriend (whom he admitted he knew wasn't an attorney) sent him one letter? Something ain't right with this picture.
I'll tell you what it is. It's found in posts made by Jeff and others at the time this was a current event. (2 years ago.) A fellow out of Canada, one Peter Hartley, was following up to each and every spambait post and listing all of Jeff's e-mail addresses and contact info for Wired magazine.
This in all likelihood is what caused the increase in mail and phone calls to Jeff and his employer. Yet you never mention it.
What neither you or Jeff mention is that about the time the spambaiting was stopped, someone posting anonymously began having temper tantrums all over apa-s, accusing Jeff of censorship and demanding that Raph update ratings. The tone of those temper tantrums was uncannily similar to the tone of the (now numbering in the thousands) of posts attacking Burnore.
Moving right along, we have Jeff talking about spam-baits:
"(Imagine what you would think if the first time you heard about the
existance of remailers, it was because someone had spam-baited you, and
then told you about it)."
Wasn't it just yesterday that you posted saomething about "fake spambaits"? How many times are you going to call Jeff Burchell a liar?
The way I see it? You misused a remailer to harass someone you had a problem with. When your ability to misuse the remailer was removed, you got mad and tried to pin the blame on your victim.
What you'll never admit is that you've made us all your victims. We lost a damn good remailer because you tried to make it part of the arsenal in your personal war against one individual. Now you give remailers a bad name because you post the same trash over and over again, even after people in various newsgroups have begged you to stop. You incite people to make threats and then you give them the information they need to follow up on those threats. You're a goddamn case study in how to misfucking use a remailer, in short, you are one sick induhvidual and I wish you would die.
