From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 03:38:33 +0800
To: mail2news@basement.replay.com
Subject: Re: Another of Gary Burnore's Lies Exposed
In-Reply-To: <19971210220912.2617@dpinc.ml.org>
Message-ID: <199712121926.UAA10480@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



"Sam" <sam-001@dpinc.ml.org> wrote:

> > Three examples:  Speculation about Wotan and MailMasher, Speculation about
> > DataBasix and one of many posts from the anon asshole complaining that
                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> > Here are selected paragraps from each.  The full messages follow:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> I'd rather look at full messages.

Good idea.  Notice Gary's usage of ad hominem argumention to avoid the issues 
on the faulty premise that if you hate the messenger then you can safely ignore 
the message.  To Gary Burnore, his constant use of the perjorative "anonymous 
asshole" is apparently intended in the same manner as "heretic" was in the
Middle Ages or "witch" was in 17th century New England.

> This is something about warez and remailer, and Burchell discussing the
> possible identity of whoever was behind whatever was discussed here.
> Nothing is said regarding the issue here of forging databasix addresses
> through the remailer, who was doing it, and why.
> 
> I happen to recall that this was what this thread is supposed to be about.

The original premise was that since the Mailmasher pseudonym server was
allegedly allowing forgeries, it should be shut down.  McClatchie's problem
was that he mistook Mailmasher for a remailer and sought to prove that it 
allowed forgeries through the pasting of From: headers when, in fact, 
Mailmasher never had this capability.  (Some of the remailers formerly did, 
but that was corrected long before the June incident with Gary Burnore, 
Belinda Bryan, and Jeff Burchell.)  The "evidence" that was posted back then 
in an attempt to implicate Mailmasher in forgery consisted of usenet posts with
truncated Path headers which stopped at the mail-to-news gateway from which
they were posted.  And none of the messages was more recent than 2/97.

Mailmasher was a predecessor to Hotmail and the other web-based e-mail 
providers.  The difference was that Mailmasher didn't require you to identify 
yourself to establish an account, but you could choose a pseudonym
and use that instead.  It never had any capabilities to specify a From:
address.  This the forged messages apparently not only had forged "From:"
lines, but a forged "Message-ID:" as well, to make it look as if it came
from Mailmasher.  The forger, however, apparently chose the wrong site to
implicate.

If you'll reread Jeff's post (the one in the URL that I previously posted),  
you'll get a little insight into Gary's actions and apparent motives for his 
later attacks on Jeff's other server, the Huge Cajones Remailer.  Let me
quote a short excerpt:

-> I still don't know what the hell is going on with DataBasix, Wells Fargo
-> and Gary Burnore, but I suspect that someone used huge.cajones to say
-> something extremely unflattering about Burnore (from what I can tell, 
-> he had it coming).  Burnore then decided that he would make things
-> difficult for me.  First, he wanted the user who had posted something
-> "inflammatory" about him revealed.  When I told him that I couldn't  
-> do that, he carried on about mail logs and identifying the host that
-> a message came from (the usual).  I didn't explain to him that my
-> machine keeps logs, but not anything involving a *@cajones.com
-> address.  He then requested the logs, which I denied (and told him
-> to get his lawyer to send a request...)

The issue was an "unflattering post", not any sort of forgery or other abuse.
The so-called "spam bait" only "conveniently" appeared later when DataBasix 
was in need of more ammo to use to get the remailer shut down:

-> 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).

Now how would a third party, who was not privy to Gary and Belinda's
private dealings with Jeff be able to exploit that timing by initiating
the spam baiting at just the "right" time?  It was almost as if the abuse 
appeared right on cue, just in time to bolster the case of DataBasix vs. Huge 
Cajones.

And notice that from Jeff's chronology, the demand by Gary Burnore and Belinda
Bryan for Jeff Burchell to turn over his logs to them came BEFORE this
alleged "spam baiting" and was based on the unflattering CONTENT of a post,
not on any alleged "forgery".  None of this can be called speculation.  It's a 
factual, historical account of DataBasix' dealings with Jeff Burchell.

Plain and simple, Gary's demand for Jeff's logs was a blatant attempt at
censorship through intimidation.  IOW, the clear implication was "if you
dare to criticize me, I'll hunt you down and you'll be sorry".

> Earlier, Anonymous wrote: ``Contrary to your accusations, not all of
> Jeff's post was "speculation".''  You took issue with that, in the context
> of your disputed attempt to obtain the remailer's logs.
> 
> Well, in this very sizeable post, speculations do, indeed, comprise only a
> portion of it.  The rest is a detailed narrative of the communications
> between the players involved so no, it was not all just a speculation.
> 
> Furthermore, you are disputing the fact that you wanted to obtain the
> remailer's logs.  I fail to see what facts you have posted which dispute
> Jeff Burchell's version of the story.  I cannot find the portion that 
> supposedly supports your claim that you did not seek to violate the
> anonymity of the remailer.  Burchell accomodated your demands, and put in
> place measures that would prevent the alleged abuse from taking place.
> Yet, you still demanded the logs.

That's precisely my point.  And now he refuses to disclose his motives for
that demand or what he intended to do with the names and addresses contained 
in those logs.  Every time he's asked the question of why he attempted to
violate the privacy of hundreds or perhaps thousands of remailer users, it 
elicits another tantrum that goes, "Lies!  Prove it!  Why are you harassing 
me?  What are your demands?"

> > Note:  I have several more posts like these, if you're interested.
> > This one is a fine example of someone (the anonymous asshole, no doubt)
> > whining about the "content based censorship"
> > because he couldn't spambait us anymore.
> 
> [snip] 
> 
> That's fine, but I do not see why this is relevant.

It's not relevant.  His usage of "anonymous asshole" is apparently generic
for anyone who dares to challenge him and who posts anonymously, and is an
obvious attempt to demonize all such individuals to divert attention from his
own tactics.

The whole "spam bait" issue is obviously a smoke screen, since the alleged 
spam-bait came AFTER the demand for Jeff's logs.