From: nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)
Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 15:37:06 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Gary Lee Burnore and His Anti-Privacy Zealots are on the Warpath!
In-Reply-To: <6gobin$ctl$1@camel20.mindspring.com>
Message-ID: <199804282237.AAA23738@basement.replay.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


William J. McClatchie <wotan@databasix.com> wrote:
 
> >Anti-privacy kooks like you and DataBasix CEO Gary Lee Burnore are one of 
> >the best arguments for the existence of anonymous remailers.  You and your
> >friends at DataBasix have a hard time bullying and harassing people into
> >silence that you can't identify, don't you?
>  
> And assholes like yourself are the best argument for *banning* remailers.
> They serve a purpose.  Unfortunately, to meet the purpose means that
> assholes are also given access to the service.

Your own record of harassing remailers is well known, McClatchie.  Calling
remailer users "assholes" and calling for content-based censorship only
underscores your anti-privacy agenda.  If remailer users posted only what
was popular and politically correct, there would be little need for
remailers.

One remailer operator who was forced to shut it down mentioned your name
quite prominently, BTW, in providing details about the attack.

> It was someone using a remailer to harass Wells Fargo management.

Can you document this?
 I never read a single post from anyone claiming to
speak for Wells Fargo management which has substantiated this.  Nor did
any of the remailer operaters involved mention having received such an
official complaint from member of Wells Fargo's management.  So all we
have is you parroting Burnore's original unsubstantiated allegations.

Isn't it interesting that when something offends Gary Burnore he often
resorts to "defending" phantom victims of the alleged "abuse"?  And shortly
thereafter, various of his sock puppets echo his whining chant.

> It was someone using a remailer who has spambaited several hundred
> email addresses.

And one such post contained Gary Burnore's own .sig block still appended to
an otherwise anonymous post.  Oops!

> It was someone using a remailer who wants to know if Gary Burnore's  
> current employer knows of his background.  And if not, how could they
> be contacted.
>
> It was someone using a remailer who posted, in direct violation of NC law
> information in its registry for the sole purpose of harrassing someone.

Please cite the NC law which you claim is being violated, and how it would
apply to a remailer located outside of NC?  Would you also say that
remailers ought to censor their content to avoid other laws being broken,
such as insulting the religion of Islam, publishing information about birth
control, abortion, etc.?  If not, why should a foreign remailer selectively
enforce this one law in NC (if it even exists)?

Telling people that the website exists and that a search for "Gary Lee
Burnore" on it might yield a match is not more "harassing" than the site
itself.  If they didn't want people to access this data, why publish it on
a public website?  The whole purpose of the website it apparently to let
people to know who the registered sex offenders are in NC and where they
live.

If someone snail mailed you something you considered "harassing" and
included no return address, would you accuse the sender of trying to get
the postal service shut down?

Wow, McClatchie.  I guess you have a point.  If you and Gary claim that all
that happened, and that it was done by someone outside of DataBasix, then I
guess we should believe it and shut down all the remailers just to make
sure they aren't abused...

But the fact is that all too often in the past, designer "abuse" would just
automagically appear at critical times when Gary Burnore and Belinda Bryan
were making demands (privately, via e-mail) on another remailer operator.
How would someone outside of DataBasix have known that?  How would someone
other than a DataBasix insider have gotten access to the complete list of
DataBasix' clients and employees in order to allegedly "spam bait" them, as
Belinda claimed?  Your own involvement in all of these attacks seems to
more than just coincidental.

Speaking of abuse and harassment, Gary Burnore demanded that Jeff Burchell
turn over to him all of his remailer logs containing the e-mail addresses
of everyone who had either sent or received anonymous e-mail through the
server.  Yet Gary refuses to disclose how such a list would have been used.
Fortunately for the remailer user community, no such data was ever
collected.

> >Lest anyone forget, Gary launched his first tirade against anonymity when
> >someone tipped off his molestation victim's mother and school officials
> >anonymously.
>  
> No, one of his first complaints about remailers was after someone used one
> to harass his SO of the time, and her daughter.  They had committed the
> heinious crime of knowing Gary.

Most women would not consider it "harassment" to be informed that their
daughters were being molested.  Nor did she complain.  Gary did!  How nice
of the perpetrator to be so considerate of his victim's mother and not want
to have her "harassed" by knowledge of what Gary was doing to her daughter.
Ignorance is bliss, huh?

Gary's motives were finally revealed when he was CONVICTED for that very
crime.  How would a random harasser have even known of Gary's sexual
activities involving minors, before he was arrested and convicted?  How
would he/she know the victim's gender, age, identity, and city of
residence?

> >Whistleblowing has always been one of the important functions
> >of anonymous remailers.
>  
> Uh huh.  And we've seen real "whistleblowing" activity here.  

Apparently so, when the perpetrator of the crime is the only one who
complains about being exposed.  In case it has escaped your attention, Gary
complained PUBLICLY about a PRIVATE e-mail message to his victim's mother.
If telling a mother that her daughter is being molested isn't
whistleblowing, what is?

> Seen plenty
> of abuse.  Seen postings of such a vile nature from remailers that when
> people made similar postings from traceable accounts, their ISP's
> terminated them.  And it was not becuase of content - but becuase the
> messages were harassing, in both nature and intent.

TRANSLATION: Anything with which the fine folks at DataBasix disagree tends
to be called "harassment" and "abuse".  As for intent, the accuser has the
burden of proof, there.

But consider this: if even mentioning Gary's sexual activities with minors
is "vile", what does that make Gary for actually committing them?