From: Jim Byrd <byrd@ACM.ORG>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 11:17:36 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Anonymous Remailer threat: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records?
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960410193734.00694638@tiac.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:01 AM 4/10/96 -0700, Jim Warren wrote:
>My understanding is that the most famous remailer, anon.penet.fi, is of the
>first flavor -- and was raided by reps of the Church of Scientology,
>several years ago, with a Finnish search warrant, and that this produced
>some [much?] of the evidence against their opponent who had allegedly been
>splattering COS copyrighted "works" all over the net.  (Interesting
>application of private property rights -- protecting religious secrets.)

The story is weirder than that.  The first poster of church secrets (with
lots of commentary) was Dennis Erlich, an ex-scientologist.  Dennis was
raided and sued, and is awaiting trial.  His ISP, Tom Klemesrud, refused
to cancel Dennis' account, and so was sued, and is awaiting trial.  A lady
met Klemesrud in a bar, identified herself as an IRS agent, and talked her
way into Klemesrud's apartment.  She proceeded to remove her clothes and
spread blood all over the apartment.  She there identified herself as a
representative of the Church of Scientology.

Klemesrud posted an account of this bizarre affair to alt.religion.scientology,
and an anonymous poster "-AB-", using anon.penet.fi, posted a differing version
of events.  The Church went ballistic over this post, and raided anon.penet.fi
to find the identity of -AB-.  This turned out to be an alumni account at
Cal Tech.  The poster has never been heard from again.

The raid on anon.penet.fi occurred in Feb. 1995.

"Scamizdat" has never used anon.penet.fi, and his (their?) identity is still
unknown.