Computer underground Digest Sun May 21, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 40
ISSN 1004-042X
Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@MVS.CSO.NIU.EDU
Archivist: Brendan Kehoe
Shadow Master: Stanton McCandlish
Field Agent Extraordinaire: David Smith
Shadow-Archivists: Dan Carosone / Paul Southworth
Ralph Sims / Jyrki Kuoppala
Ian Dickinson
Goddess of Judyism Editor: J. Tenuta
CONTENTS, #7.40 (Sun, May 21, 1995)
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 02:11:39 -0500 From: jthomas@SUN.SOCI.NIU.EDU(Jim Thomas) Subject: File 2--Church of Scientology v. the Net (background)((MODERATORS' NOTE: The Church of Scientology has generated considerable heat in a number of Usenet groups, including comp.org.eff.talk, by engaging in actions that many observers consider an attack on, among other things, free speech. Ron Newman's summary below is just part of the extensive archives on the issue that can be found on his homepage at:
http://www.mit.edu:8001/people/rnewman/scientology/home.html
THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY VS. THE NET
This page created by Ron Newman. The opinions expressed here are
solely those of the author, and are not necessarily shared by MIT.
Last revised May 15, 1995.
The first such cancels started around Christmas of 1994, and were sent by harryj@netcom.com (Harry Jones), who did not understand his news-posting software well enough to conceal his true identity. He eventually got smarter, and later cancels came from the non-existent account robocanceller@netcom.com. The cancels quickly attracted the attention of Time magazine's Netwatch column, which mentioned them in the January 16, 1995 issue. After weeks of complaints, Netcom's system administrators finally installed software that forced anyone sending a cancel to reveal their true identity (or, at least, their Netcom user ID). Subsequent cancels then came from: mako@netcom.com (Michael Clark), student@netcom.com (John Palmer), and bettyj@netcom.com (Elizabeth Jones). Netcom soon disabled logins from all of these accounts.
Soon afterwards, two more cancels originated from the site deltanet.com, and claimed to come from the address noman@odesi.com. Don't try to send e-mail there; it's a non-existent site. But the good news is that, on March 6, the good folks at deltanet.com found and terminated the accounts of two users who issued forged cancels from their site. Here's a report from deltanet's system administrator..
I thought we'd seen the last of the Cancelbunny, but it came back once again on March 30, this time from the UK. Here's a fairly recent cancel, dated April 7. The system administrator of demon.co.uk has informed me that the cancel appeared to originate at another UK site, pipex.net. That site, in turn, apparently received it from a site in Ireland, possibly an open-access NNTP port. The search continues...
If you are familiar with certain American television commercials, you'll understand why I dubbed this the "Cancelbunny": it just keeps going, and going, and going...
Internet World magazine asked Helena Kobrin for an explanation, and got a long letter back from her. I wasn't terribly impressed, and sent her a reply. The magazine's article appeared in the April 1995 issue. A shorter article (by net.personality Joel Furr) appeared in the April 1995 issue of the UK magazine Internet and Comms Today. Also check out the article in the April 1995 issue of the UK's .net magazine.
Threatened the operators of anonymous remailing services On January 4, 1995, Church attorney Thomas Small sent this e-mail to the operators of several anonymous remailing services, demanding that they disallow anonymous posting to alt.religion.scientology.
In response to both the rmgroup and this letter, Jon Noring
Update, April 4, 1995: Helena's at it again! This time she's made
three threatening phone calls to remailer operator Homer Smith.
Erlich did not know about any of this until 7:30 in the morning of
Monday, February 13, when Church attorney Thomas Small and seven other
people demanded entry to his home. According to Erlich, they spent
over six hours copying and deleting files from his computer system. A
Glendale police officer was present at the beginning and end of the
raid, but not at any other time.
Dennis posted a first-person account of the raid to Usenet that night.
The following day, both the Glendale News-Press and the Los Angeles
Times reported on the raid. Church lawyer Helena Kobrin (remember
her?) posted her version of the story to Usenet as well. (This link
also includes two responses from David Sternlight and Jon Noring.) In
addition, the Glendale News-Press published an editorial supporting
free expression on the Internet on February 21, which drew a reply
from a Church spokeswoman in the same newspaper three days later.
Toronto's ultra-net-savvy weekly newspaper eye published a good
article in their February 23 issue.
A court hearing was held on Tuesday, Febrauary 21 in San Jose Federal
District Court. Dennis made a statement to the court. Tom Klemesrud,
the owner and operator of support.com, also made a statement. Netcom's
vice-president of software engineering, Rich Francis, filed a
statement as well, as did Netcom's lawyers. At this hearing, the
judge lifted the restraining orders against support.com and Netcom,
and modified the restraining order against Dennis.
I won't go into the details of the hearing on this page; instead, read
the official court transcript, or the first-person accounts by Shelley
Thomson, Alan Hacker, and Carl Kaun, as well as the February 22
newspaper articles in the Glendale News-Press, Los Angeles Times, and
San Jose Mercury News. The Church also issued a post-hearing press
release.
After the hearing, the Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a
February 23 edition of its newsletter EFFector Online, containing a
substantial addition to its original statement about the Church's
threats to the Net.
On February 27, Helena Kobrin wrote a letter to Judge Whyte claiming
that Dennis Erlich had violated the amended restraining order the
previous day. Erlich sent an apology to the Judge that same day,
explaining that he had not yet received the amended restraining order
before allegedly violating it. (Apparently it was delivered to the
wrong address.) That was not good enough for the Church lawyers, who
promptly filed two more motions, one seeking a contempt-of-court
citation against Erlich, the other requesting an injunction against
Netcom and support.com.
In support of this request, the Church submitted declarations by
church lawyers Helena Kobrin and Andrew Wilson, an unidentified person
named Lynn Farny, and three computer specialists: Internet service
provider David Elrod, digital image processing expert Kenneth
Castleman, and UCLA computer science professor Alfonso Cardenas. The
Church also filed an amended complaint with the court on March 3rd.
The San Francisco Chronicle belatedly covered the story on March 2nd,
as did the Philadelphia Inquirer on April 1st. The Glendale News-Press
published yet another article on March 3rd, and the UK weekly trade
magazine Computing published a brief article in the March 9th edition.
Meanwhile, the Net's own Shelley Thomson devoted the second issue of
her new net-'zine, Biased Journalism, to the Erlich case.
Dennis Erlich now has legal representation, from the San Francisco law
firm of Morrison and Foerester ("MoFo"). Because of their good work,
Judge Whyte cancelled a March 17 hearing which was to hear a motion to
hold Dennis in contempt of court. Instead, the judge issued an order
delaying all pending hearings until further notice. (Dennis reported
this news to Usenet in two messages on March 15 and March 16.)
The two sides last met in court at a "Case Management Meeting" on
April 7, where they agreed to schedule a "Mega-hearing" on June 23.
This hearing will consider Helena's motion to hold Dennis in contempt,
Helena's motion for an injunction against all three defendants, and
Tom and Netcom's motion to dismiss them from the case. The trial (by
jury) date is set for early 1996.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has established the Dennis Erlich
Defense Fund for people who want to help Dennis cover the "hard
costs" of his legal defense. Follow this link for more information.
Dennis's ex-wife Rosa continues to harass him with claims that he owes
$40,000 in child-support payments. Dennis claims that he's been denied
the right to visit the child. Here's a link to Dennis's latest
postings on this subject.
Dennis suspects that the Scientologists may have "bought" Dennis's
alleged debt from Rosa in order to collect it. A member of the
Church's Office of Special Affairs, Andrew Milne, posted a message
claiming that a Scientologist named Robert Lippman "has obtained a
restraining order against Dennis Erlich over Erlich's threat to kill
him at the 1992 Cult Awareness Network conference." Erlich says he's
never been served with any such order and has never met or heard of
Lippman. Follow this link for an index of all legal papers that the
Electronic Frontier Foundation has received electronic copies of.
Daniel Davidson is a student at San Francisco State University in
California. Because of Helena's complaint, SFSU's director of
computing services, John True, filed a disciplinary charge against
Davidson. Davidson was required to appear at a disciplinary hearing on
Friday, March 31. He explained his predicament in a series of Usenet
messages. Fortunately, Davidson was exonerated of all charges. This
was partly due to the good work of Netizens throughout the world, who
sent numerous e-mails and faxes to San Francisco State University
officials explaining why Helena's groundless complaint should not be a
cause for punitive action by the University. One of the best such
letters was sent by Bruce Tober, a reporter for the UK magazine
Internet and Comms Today.
Bob "Sloth" Bingham received an ominous e-mail note from a known
Scientologist, informing him that his Web page had been "reported" to
the Church's Office of Special Affairs (intelligence unit).
Not all the harassment has come from lawyers. The Church's private
investigator, Eugene Ingram, visited Jeff Jacobsen, and also dropped
in on Jeff's sister and his neighbor's 13-year-old son. Private
investigators again lurked near Jeff's house on May 1st. Someone
called the long distance phone companies of both Jeff Jacobsen and
Homer Smith, impersonating each of them to try to obtain logs of
their long-distance calls. A policeman visited Martin Hunt, asking
about messages he allegedly posted to alt.religion.scientology.
In Oklahoma, TarlaStar got a phone call from someone falsely claiming
to represent her Internet Service Provider. A few days later, two
Church of Scientology representatives posted her real first and last
name, her address, her phone number, and her husband's name to
alt.religion.scientology.
On April 15, two Scientologists paid Grady Ward an unannounced
personal visit. This link contains both Grady's story and a
counter-story from Scientologist "Chris Miller", who seems to have
some kind of inside connection with Scientology's Office of Special
Affairs.
On May 8, Grady's publisher received a threatening and slanderous
phone call from a man identifying himself as Gene Ingram, who is a
private investigator for the Church of Scientology. On May 10, a very
inquisitive stranger visited Grady's 74-year-old mother in Oregon.
Last November, Arnie Lerma received both an unnnounced visit and a
threatening anonymous fax.
Gary Reibert, who had only posted two messages to
alt.religion.scientology, experienced a variety of disturbing events: his
car was tailed, someone phoned him to do a survey in which "not
participating is not an option", and somone else impersonated him in a
phone call to his gas company, falsely reporting damage to his line.
Finally, someone claming to be both a Scientologist and an MIT alumnus
sent this complaint to the MIT webmaster. (Unfortunately, a bug in
MIT's comment gateway truncated the message.) The webmaster sent him
this reply.
Update, April 21: FACTnet seems to be back on the air, sort of. Some
anonymous person has created a "FACTnet Scientology WWW-Kit", which they
are serving from http://xs4all.nl/~fonss. Another netizen
has reorganized the FACTnet table of contents, which much improved
readability: see http://power.stu.rpi.edu/newfact.html (no longer
available at 2000).
You can download
your own copy of the kit from http://xs4all.nl/~fonss/factkit.zip.
Update, May 11: FACTnet has put all of its text files, in .zip format,
onto its FTP site, ftp://ftp.rmii.com/pub2/factnet/.
These files were
scheduled to disappear at the end of April, but seem to have been
given a reprieve. Still, they could vanish at any time. Get them now!
Compromised the security of anon.penet.fi, an anonymous remailer in
Finland
In early February, 1995, Church representatives somehow used Interpol
and the Finnish police to demand the True Name of a user of
anon.penet.fi, an anonymous remailer in Finland. Julf Helsingius,
the administrator of anon.penet.fi, announced this in a Usenet message
to many newsgroups on February 18, 1995. He followed this with a press
release on February 21. The Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat
covered the story on February 18; this was soon followed by the
Associated Press, Time magazine, and another "Postcard from
Cyberspace" column from Dan Akst in the February 22 Los Angeles
Times.Sued a user, his BBS, and his Internet service provider
Invaded the user's home, seizing and deleting files
On February 8, 1995, two Church corporations filed a lawsuit and a
request for a restraining order against Dennis Erlich of Glendale,
California, alleging that he was posting the Church's "copyrighted
trade secrets". They also sued the bulletin board he was using,
support.com, and the bulletin board's Internet service provider,
Netcom. Two days later, they received a temporary restraining order
against the three defendants, as well as a writ of seizure allowing
them to search Erlich's home and seize computer files.Legal (and extra-legal) threats against netizens
The Church of Scientology's lovely lawyer, Helena Kobrin, has sent
intimidating electronic mail to a number of netizens, including Martin
Hunt, Nico Garcia, Grady Ward, and Daniel Davidson. Grady wrote a
strongly-worded reply to Helena's bullying letter.Will Scientology force FACTnet to shut down?
Scientology has also threatened the FACTnet bulletin-board system with
numerous lawsuits, forcing them to remove their Web page. This BBS
contains a huge library documenting the activities of Scientology and
other religious cults. FACTnet may have to to shut down entirely in a
few weeks, and they have issued a general appeal to netizens asking
that you download their files free of charge while they are still
available.It's been going on for years...off the Net
Internet users are finding out something that writers and journalists
have known for years: the Church of Scientology doesn't take kindly to
people who write negative things about it. They've sued and harassed
numerous writers of books, such as biographer Russell Miller, who
described his courtroom experience in a Punch magazine article in
February 1988. More recently, they've picketed and distributed
defamatory leaflets about writer Jon Atack, whose story is told in a
1994 Evening Argus article. Los Angeles Times writer Robert Welkos was
followed by private investigators and received unsolicited
hand-delivered ads from funeral homes; you can read a first-person
account in his Quill magazine article.For more information...
on the Church of Scientology, check out all of the
following:
on preserving free expression on the Net:
browse the web sites of
the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and MIT's Student Association
for Freedom of Expression (SAFE).
Return to Ron Newman's home page.
For an FTP-like list of available files, follow this link.
Ron Newman's Home-page rnewman@mit.edu
Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1995 22:51:01 CDT
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