500 MB Nyheder Direkte fra Internet 5/500 MB nyheder direkte fra internet CD 5.iso/start/progs/text/cud740

Text File | 1995-05-24 | 47KB | 895 lines

Computer underground Digest    Sun  May 21, 1995   Volume 7 : Issue 40
                           ISSN  1004-042X

       Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer ([e-mail]
       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)

File 1--Church of Scientology and the Nets
File 2--Church of Scientology v. the Net (background)
File 3--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Apr, 1995)

CuD ADMINISTRATIVE, EDITORIAL, AND SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION APPEARS IN
THE CONCLUDING FILE AT THE END OF EACH ISSUE.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Wed, 17 May 95 22:51:53 PDT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: File 1--Church of Scientology and the Nets

Short report on alt.religion.scientology by Keith Henson

I am not going to try to give much more than pointers to a frey which
is running to hundreds of postings a day for months now.  The "Church"
of Scientology is the main topic of discussion in a group called
alt.religion.scientology.  The "Church" has taken a dim view of these
discussions and has reacted by 1) attempting to rmgroup the whole
thing, 2) cancelling posting, harrassing posters--even going to the
extent of exposing real identities, 3) breaking the anonymous server
in Finland, and many other anti-social acts (by net standards).  As
a result, someone or ones has posted a mess of Scientology policy
papers (which read like a mafia policy manual) and a lot of their
closely held secrets (which read like SF Hubbard failed to sell in
the '50s).  You really have to be there to get the flavor, but be
sure to bring your kill file.

(See File #2 below for further information)

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 02:11:39 -0500
From: [e-mail](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.

Quick index

     * Grady Ward's 74-year-old mother visited by an inquisitive stranger
     * Grady Ward's publisher gets a slanderous phone call from Eugene
       Ingram
     * Support the Dennis Erlich Defense Fund
     * New section: FACTnet needs your help, last changed May 11
     * Latest developments in Erlich case, last changed May 6

     * Raid on Dennis Erlich; suit against Erlich, BBS, Netcom
     * Legal (and extra-legal) threats against netizens, last changed May
       15
     * Attempt to remove alt.religion.scientology newsgroup
     * Attempt to censor alt.religion.scientology newsgroup with
       unauthorized cancel messages
     * Attempt to intimidate anonymous remailer operators
     * Raid on anon.penet.fi
     * Harassment of writers and journalists
     * Legal papers in Erlich case (now at the Electronic Frontier
       Foundation)
     * Newspaper & magazine articles
     * Other sources of information
     * FTP-like directory & file listing

   The Church of Scientology is a religious cult which has unwisely
   decided to declare war against the Usenet and Internet communities.
   Since December of 1994, this Church and its followers have committed
   the following acts:

Tried to censor a Usenet discussion group

   Members or allies of the Church have tried to remove messages written
   by other people in the Usenet discussion group
   alt.religion.scientology. They did this by sending unauthorized
   cancel messages, which are specially-formatted messages instructing
   Usenet servers to delete a previously posted message. Here's an
   example of such a cancel message, and here's another. Some of these
   cancels were accompanied by text claiming that the original message
   contained violations of the Church's copyrights and trade secrets. But
   copyright disputes should be settled in a court of law, not by
   faceless vigilantes issuing cancel messages.

   The first such cancels started around Christmas of 1994, and were sent
   by [e-mail] (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 [e-mail]. 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: [e-mail] (Michael
   Clark), [e-mail] (John Palmer), and [e-mail]
   (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 [e-mail].
   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...

Tried to shut down a Usenet discussion group

   On January 11, 1995, a lawyer for the Church, Helena Kobrin
   <[e-mail]>, sent a rmgroup message, which is an instruction
   to Usenet servers to delete the entire discussion group
   alt.religion.scientology. This message claimed that the group's very
   name infringed on the Church's trademark, and again complained that
   members of the group were posting infingements of the Church's
   copyrights. The "rmgroup" had little effect, because most Usenet
   system administrators regard such messages as purely advisory, and
   several quickly sent newgroup messages to re-create the group on any
   server that had removed it.

   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
   <[e-mail]> circulated a Net Petition asking that the
   Church cease its attacks on the Net. At the same time, the Electronic
   Frontier Foundation issued a statement urging the Church to stop
   threatening Internet system administrators with litigation. Daniel
   Akst wrote a "Postcard from Cyberspace" column in the January 25 Los
   Angeles Times, and Richard Leiby wrote a "CyberSurfing" column in the
   February 2 Washington Post.

   Update, April 4, 1995: Helena's at it again! This time she's made
   three threatening phone calls to remailer operator Homer Smith.

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.

   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.

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.

   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.

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.

   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. 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!

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:
          + the first-person accounts by three Netizens who joined the
            Church, then realized their mistake: Kim Baker of South
            Africa, Patrick Jost, and Chris (last name unknown) of San
            Diego State University.
          + My online archive of newspaper and magazine articlesabout
            Scientology
          + Bob "Sloth" Bingham's, Martin Poulter's, Tilman Hausherr's,
            and David Dennis's web pages, which contain pointers to many
            other interesting documents.
          + Don Lindsay's Non-Scientologist FAQ
          + Rod Keller's FAQ
          + Martin Hunt's guide to the cult's strange vocabulary
          + the FTP sites of Jeff Jacobsen, Modemac, and FACTnet.
     * 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 <[e-mail]>
=========================================================================
Received: (from NIUCS for <[e-mail]> via BSMTP)
Received: (from A01MLRV@NIUCS for MAILER@NIU via NJE)
 (UCLA/Mail V1.500 M-RSCS8895-8895-385); Wed, 17 May 95 02:15:32 CDT
Received: from NIUCS by NIUCS (Mailer R2.10 ptf000) with BSMTP id 8279; Wed, 17
 May 95 02:15:22 CDT
Received: from sun.soci.niu.edu by vm.cso.niu.edu (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP;
   Wed, 17 May 95 02:15:20 CDT
Received: by sun.soci.niu.edu (5.0/SMI-SVR4)
        id AA06502; Wed, 17 May 1995 02:11:39 -0500
Date: Wed, 17 May 1995 02:11:39 -0500
From: [e-mail](Jim Thomas)
Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
To: [e-mail]
Content-Length: 19784


                     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.

Quick index

     * Grady Ward's 74-year-old mother visited by an inquisitive stranger
     * Grady Ward's publisher gets a slanderous phone call from Eugene
       Ingram
     * Support the Dennis Erlich Defense Fund
     * New section: FACTnet needs your help, last changed May 11
     * Latest developments in Erlich case, last changed May 6

     * Raid on Dennis Erlich; suit against Erlich, BBS, Netcom
     * Legal (and extra-legal) threats against netizens, last changed May
       15
     * Attempt to remove alt.religion.scientology newsgroup
     * Attempt to censor alt.religion.scientology newsgroup with
       unauthorized cancel messages
     * Attempt to intimidate anonymous remailer operators
     * Raid on anon.penet.fi
     * Harassment of writers and journalists
     * Legal papers in Erlich case (now at the Electronic Frontier
       Foundation)
     * Newspaper & magazine articles
     * Other sources of information
     * FTP-like directory & file listing

   The Church of Scientology is a religious cult which has unwisely
   decided to declare war against the Usenet and Internet communities.
   Since December of 1994, this Church and its followers have committed
   the following acts:

Tried to censor a Usenet discussion group

   Members or allies of the Church have tried to remove messages written
   by other people in the Usenet discussion group
   alt.religion.scientology. They did this by sending unauthorized
   cancel messages, which are specially-formatted messages instructing
   Usenet servers to delete a previously posted message. Here's an
   example of such a cancel message, and here's another. Some of these
   cancels were accompanied by text claiming that the original message
   contained violations of the Church's copyrights and trade secrets. But
   copyright disputes should be settled in a court of law, not by
   faceless vigilantes issuing cancel messages.

   The first such cancels started around Christmas of 1994, and were sent
   by [e-mail] (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 [e-mail]. 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: [e-mail] (Michael
   Clark), [e-mail] (John Palmer), and [e-mail]
   (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 [e-mail].
   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...

Tried to shut down a Usenet discussion group

   On January 11, 1995, a lawyer for the Church, Helena Kobrin
   <[e-mail]>, sent a rmgroup message, which is an instruction
   to Usenet servers to delete the entire discussion group
   alt.religion.scientology. This message claimed that the group's very
   name infringed on the Church's trademark, and again complained that
   members of the group were posting infingements of the Church's
   copyrights. The "rmgroup" had little effect, because most Usenet
   system administrators regard such messages as purely advisory, and
   several quickly sent newgroup messages to re-create the group on any
   server that had removed it.

   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
   <[e-mail]> circulated a Net Petition asking that the
   Church cease its attacks on the Net. At the same time, the Electronic
   Frontier Foundation issued a statement urging the Church to stop
   threatening Internet system administrators with litigation. Daniel
   Akst wrote a "Postcard from Cyberspace" column in the January 25 Los
   Angeles Times, and Richard Leiby wrote a "CyberSurfing" column in the
   February 2 Washington Post.

   Update, April 4, 1995: Helena's at it again! This time she's made
   three threatening phone calls to remailer operator Homer Smith.

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.

   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.

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.

   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.

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.

   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. 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!

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:
          + the first-person accounts by three Netizens who joined the
            Church, then realized their mistake: Kim Baker of South
            Africa, Patrick Jost, and Chris (last name unknown) of San
            Diego State University.
          + My online archive of newspaper and magazine articlesabout
            Scientology
          + Bob "Sloth" Bingham's, Martin Poulter's, Tilman Hausherr's,
            and David Dennis's web pages, which contain pointers to many
            other interesting documents.
          + Don Lindsay's Non-Scientologist FAQ
          + Rod Keller's FAQ
          + Martin Hunt's guide to the cult's strange vocabulary
          + the FTP sites of Jeff Jacobsen, Modemac, and FACTnet.
     * 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 <[e-mail]>

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Apr 1995 22:51:01 CDT
From: CuD Moderators <[e-mail]>
Subject: File 3--Cu Digest Header Info (unchanged since 19 Apr, 1995)

Cu-Digest is a weekly electronic journal/newsletter. Subscriptions are
available at no cost electronically.

CuD is available as a Usenet newsgroup: comp.society.cu-digest

Or, to subscribe, send a one-line message:  SUB CUDIGEST  your name
Send it to  [e-mail]
The editors may be contacted by voice (815-753-0303), fax [phone])
or U.S. mail at:  Jim Thomas, Department of Sociology, NIU, DeKalb, IL
60115, USA.

To UNSUB, send a one-line message:   UNSUB CUDIGEST <your name>
Send it to  [e-mail]
(NOTE: The address you unsub must correspond to your From: line)

Issues of CuD can also be found in the Usenet comp.society.cu-digest
news group; on CompuServe in DL0 and DL4 of the IBMBBS SIG, DL1 of
LAWSIG, and DL1 of TELECOM; on GEnie in the PF*NPC RT
libraries and in the VIRUS/SECURITY library; from America Online in
the PC Telecom forum under "computing newsletters;"
On Delphi in the General Discussion database of the Internet SIG;
on RIPCO BBS [phone] (and via Ripco on  internet);
and on Rune Stone BBS (IIRGWHQ) [phone].
CuD is also available via Fidonet File Request from
1:11/70; unlisted nodes and points welcome.

EUROPE:  In BELGIUM: Virtual Access BBS:  [phone] (ringdown)
         Brussels: STRATOMIC BBS [phone]:291/[e-mail]
         In ITALY: Bits against the Empire BBS:  [phone]
         In LUXEMBOURG: ComNet BBS:  [phone]

  UNITED STATES:  etext.archive.umich.edu (192.131.22.8)  in /pub/CuD/
                  ftp.eff.org (192.88.144.4) in /pub/Publications/CuD/
                  aql.gatech.edu (128.61.10.53) in /pub/eff/cud/
                  world.std.com in /src/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
                  uceng.uc.edu in /pub/wuarchive/doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
                  wuarchive.wustl.edu in /doc/EFF/Publications/CuD/
  EUROPE:         nic.funet.fi in pub/doc/cud/ (Finland)
                  ftp.warwick.ac.uk in pub/cud/ (United Kingdom)

  JAPAN:          ftp.glocom.ac.jp /mirror/ftp.eff.org/Publications/CuD
                  ftp://www.rcac.tdi.co.jp/pub/mirror/CuD

The most recent issues of CuD can be obtained from the
Cu Digest WWW site at:
  URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu:80/~cudigest/

COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST is an open forum dedicated to sharing
information among computerists and to the presentation and debate of
diverse views.  CuD material may  be reprinted for non-profit as long
as the source is cited. Authors hold a presumptive copyright, and
they should be contacted for reprint permission.  It is assumed that
non-personal mail to the moderators may be reprinted unless otherwise
specified.  Readers are encouraged to submit reasoned articles
relating to computer culture and communication.  Articles are
preferred to short responses.  Please avoid quoting previous posts
unless absolutely necessary.

DISCLAIMER: The views represented herein do not necessarily represent
            the views of the moderators. Digest contributors assume all
            responsibility for ensuring that articles submitted do not
            violate copyright protections.

------------------------------

End of Computer Underground Digest #7.40
************************************



-----------------------------------------------------------------------

     This file passed through SEA OF NOISE, [phone]...

                          SHARE & ENJOY!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------