From: owen@autodesk.com (D. Owen Rowley)
Date: Thu, 7 Oct 93 16:49:20 PDT
To: pierre@shell.portal.com
Subject: Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers
Message-ID: <9310072339.AA12738@lux.YP.acad>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



 > From: pierre@shell.portal.com (Pierre Uszynski)
  > From: owen@autodesk.com (D. Owen Rowley)
  > There is another level of *menace* which I suppose many of you are unaware
 > > I mean people who exploit insecure sites and networking skill to forge
 > > mail and articles as part of a concerted and ongoing campaign of
 >                                  ?????????????????????
 > > harrasement.
 > > Stuff that has resulted in very serious consequences.
 >                              ?????????????????????????
 > > Theres no need to go into detail here about the array of tactics and
 > > the widening scope of the phenomenon, but I think it needs to be looked
 > > at as an example of how and why systems are abused.
 > 
 > On the contrary, let's hear the details.

There are three personas in particular, who stand out in the crowd, they are:

The Dark Knight
    Obvious psuedonym, claims that he was disciplined or fired because
    the nasty queers on soc.motss complained to his management about
    his honestly stated opinions. during two periods of his unwanted
    attentions and homophobic ranting there were several serious sendsys 
    bombing incidents. I know of one in which an SGI employee was 
    mail bombed with enough garbage to clog their whole mail system for
    quite a while.   
 
    Interuption of net connectivity to a whole company in order to 
    amuse some creep who fancys himself as a fag-bashing super hero,
    fits my definition of sociopath, and I suspect that if it happened
    to any of us, filling up our disk real estate, delaying our business
    as usual, we would consider it a serious situation.

    I'm not sure how many there were, but during the worst phases,
    there  could be two or three such incidents per day, involving 
    gigabytes of data.

RALF, or RLF
	bizarre and aggresively homophobic, tends to rant
	about how homos victimised him in some way or another.
	Claimed to be Church of RALF, has a  numerological
        hangup over his birthdate , pretty much your basic
        testosterone poisoned megalomaniac.
	
	also present and gloating during or around periods of mail bombing.
	like dark Knight, the home site of the acct changes,
	or is forged.

Dr Artimus Page
	Phoney acct claiming to have succesfull therapies to turn
	disgusting homos into natural men like him. Posts long
	and surreal accounts, projecting his anal fantasys onto
	the nasty homos and promising to cure them.. uh huh!

	Claimed that phoney name and acct were to protect him from
        the roving gangs of hetero-bashers who are out to get him.

    In another incident from that same period an individual was 
    targetted who did not have a very understanding employer, 
    he was fired as a result. 
    A very serious matter for the guy, who's life got turned 
    upside down because he was the target of these acts.

    Sendsys messages would be forged, ton_o_byte mail bombings would be
    forged in the name of other soc.motss regulars, usually those who 
    posted uppity responses to these *honestly stated opinions*.
    Punitive repostings of months of back traffic 
    Oh.. yes.. there were denials.. but the common factors between
    all three of these guys and the harrasement
    showed more than a casual relationship between the appearance of
    this character and patterns of e-harrasement.


There were occasional other minor players who would come around, usually
obvious forgerys from accts claiming to have been succesfully cured
by the sagely Dr Page, and trying to date the Lesbians in order to
help them too.

Rarely would more than one be present at a time, they seemed to run
in a patterned sequence that has consistently covered the last two years.

A good deal of it starts as nuisance stuff, forged addresses, forged 
cancelations. And you can look at sendsys and mail_bombing as the 
functional equivelant of ordering pizzas or other deliveries to 
a third party, but I see it as a pattern borrowed from terrorists,
purposeful and repeated , intent to wear down the spirit, and keep
their prey on the defensive so recovery doesn't happen. 
I have no illusion that it takes a rocket scientist to pull off these
stunts, nor that given the state of our net,  anything can really
be done to stop it now.

However the real world effect was that the real
people of soc.motss were subjected to severe psychological harrasement,
of the type that wouldn't be tolerated for a minute in real-space.

That we currently have no choice but to tolerate it in cyberspace is
not an acceptable prospect. Having experienced the personal cost of
this sort of thing on my own psyche, I can tell you that it is 
maddening while it is going on, and sobering  afterwards when you realise 
how vulnerable you are.

There are others of course, actually quite a few who are more than willing
to display there ignorance from their real accts. Why I bet some of 'em
probably are on this list.

lets see.. heres just a partial list of proud defenders of heterosexuality
who find it amusing to taunt the queers on soc.motss.

Daniel J Karnes, Walter Smith, Gary Lang, Ted Kaldis, Clayton Cramer,
and more.. many many more.

 > > soc.motss and other newsgroups have seen a long list of pseudo-persons
 > > posting from non existent sites, and yes.. penet has been used to this
 > > effect.
 
 > ok, and anonymous remailers don't change that possibility one way or the
 > other. I'll go hang out there for a while anyway...

I understand that, and for that matter I feel strongly enough about wanting 
my own freedom that I'll join you.

 > > I think that the design of privacy systems needs to take these
 > > dark-side issues seriously and do their best to minimise the potential
 > > for abuse. 
 
 > Sure, but consider that extremist systems will exist nonetheless.

oh .. of course, I'm only arguing for diligence and design criterea
that will buy us optimum freedom, and minimise opportunity for abuse.

 > > Perhaps a *zoning* concept is needed, in such that transactions would
 > > have qualifying conditions - or in such that *zones* exist as data-space
 > > with authentication qualifications for *entry* or transaction.
 
 > Who qualifies whom, based on what info, and to eliminate whom?

Well.. I suppose that in the case of commerce, the vendor will, and that 
market forces will ultimately detrmine the succesful strategys.

Think of it in terms of reliability, and trustiness. Accountability
optimises both, anonymity diminishes both - in fact can potentially
dispense with accountability. when your transaction involves value
don't you want reliability and accountability? 
I do.

If providing my identity as collateral for reliability is required in
some transactions, I think thats reasonable to offer as an option.

I tend to think of cyberspace in terms of the UnReal Estate business.
If I have some data space, then I think I should be able to determine
who gets in and what they do there.

regarding common data-space and whether there should be rules and 
accountability, would you move yourself or your family to a 
neighborhood where you couldn't determine who gets into your place
or hold them accountable for what they do there?

Perhaps you have a higher opinion regarding the negative aspects of
human nature than I.

LUX ./. owen