These extracts from RISKs Digest of 1995 covering the Scientology
crime syndicate's racketeering and extortion against anonymous
remailers is timely only in the sense that last week the criminal
enterprise complained to a Judge in Florida that -- given the fact
that most people know about Scientology's criminal basis, they can't
find a venue for the McPherson murder trial where there's any hope
of not being found guilty.

Okay, it's not officially being called a murder trial yet it is the
only trial the killers are going to get for murdering Lisa.

-=-

Scientology Blackmail Risk
Javilk 
Tue, 14 Mar 1995 14:32:39 -0800 (PST)

If, as was mentioned in the prior edition, the Finish police handed all
the anonymous ID database to the Scientologists, many of the people who
have used the anonymizing service may RISK exposure to some form of
blackmail attempts.  One has only to look at some of the articles posted
in the Scientology forum on the Usenet to see what they are often accused
of.

A few thoughts from a course I once attended at IBM on industrial
espionage:

    The typical means of gaining control used by some intelligence 
    services, (including private ones,) and often cults, is to make a 
    series of minor but unethical or illegal requests which, once 
    filled, would place the victim greater and greater conflict with 
    their employers, the law, and/or society if their deeds were to 
    be made public.  The goal is to deny the victim access to legal 
    and societal services.  (And in the case of cults, outside
    moral support.) Eventually, the victim has no choice but to 
    comply with even the most hienious of operations, or risk long 
    term incarceration, or worse.

    One way to avoid this scenario, is to call the would-be blackmailer's
    bluff and say "No" at the outset.  A better way, would be to seek out 
    and cooperate with an appropriate company security or law enforcement 
    agency, such as the FBI, so as to help them turn the blackmail 
    operation into a sting. The would-be victim is usually given immunity 
    from prosecution.  In most cases, the typical minor transgressions 
    spoken of via an anonymizing service user would be laughed at by the 
    police; but the concept of blackmail on an organized scale should be 
    taken quite seriously by an organization such as the FBI.

    One should also note, that if the FBI, CIA, etc. are not watching the
    anonymizing services, they are sadly in remiss of their duties. It does

    not take much to crack such a service!  Thus one may suspect that 
    voluntary cooperation at the outset might be to one's benefit in most 
    cases; and in some cases, being blackmailed by a more nefarious 
    organization may actually turn out to be a relatively opportune event.

If the Scientologists begin to fear that many of their potential victims
would turn to the FBI, they may become more reluctant to pursue potential
victims.  Perhaps we should push this concept a bit on the net and
elsewhere.

John V. Vilkaitis, Senior Consultant, Software General Corp.
javilk@netcom.com

-=-

Re: Scientology Blackmail Risk (Vilkaitis, RISKS-16.91)
"Lance A. Brown" 
Wed, 15 Mar 1995 10:58:37 -0500

Vilkaitis is not correct.  Postings on alt.security.pgp stated that Finnish
authorities secured a warrant to seize the equipment the Finnish Anonymous
Server runs on.  The owner of the Server negotiated a deal with the
authorities where he released the identity of _one_ user of the Server and
the authorities didn't seize the equipment.

My understanding of the behind-the-scenes goings on is that the Church of
Scientology is bringing copyright charges against one of its former
ministers who is now a vocal critic of the CoS on the Internet.  The
sequence of events, as I understand it, is that someone used the Finnish
Anonymous Server to post allegedly copyright material on USENET.  The CoS
asked the FBI to talk to Interpol who talked to the Finnish Police about
getting the ID information of the anonymous poster.  Once this ID
information was released by the owner of the Server it was immediately
handed over to CoS people.

   [Also noted by Kevin.P.Maguire@jpl.nasa.gov (Kevin Maguire) and
      "Matti E. Aarnio [OH1MQK]" .  PGN]

-=-

Re: Scientology Blackmail Risk (Vilkaitis, RISKS-16.91)
Jon Green 
Wed, 15 Mar 1995 09:40:35 +0000 (GMT)

  [... more as noted by Lance Brown deleted ...  PGN]

Nonetheless, this does represent a worrying precedent.  There are 
persistent numours that the entire user base of at least one anonymizing 
service has been compromised by covert action by a security agency, and 
that's just the start.  As has been pointed out elsewhere, any agency 
monitoring international communications (NSA in the US and GCHQ in the UK, 
to name two) should have little trouble matching anon ID with real ID if 
the message is in plaintext and the server in another country.  Matching 
messages where the first leg is PGP-encoded (and the server decodes before 
retransmission) would be more difficult, but by no means impossible.

The only sensible conclusion is that anon remailers provide anonymity from
your peers, not from the law.  If you use them illegally, you may well be
identified.  Them's the breaks.

jonsg@hyphen.com  jon@sundome.demon.co.uk

-=-

Re: Internet-Finland Privacy (RISKS-16.91)
Michael Jennings 

15 Mar 1995 17:16:33 GMT
>Case #1 ...  A Swedish journalist-researcher "reveals" that an Anonymous
>Case #2 ...  Finnish Police receive a request from U.S. law enforcement

    There have been suggestions on the net (in alt.privacy.anon-server,
    I think) that these two events may well have been related: specifically

    that the Church of Scientology might have been indirectly responsible 
    for the 'This anon server is used by pedophiles: shock, horror' stories

    in the first place, as an attempt to discredit the anon server in order

    to make the police more likely to raid it for them/ get it shut down. 
    This is only speculation, but it is consistent with their style. It is 
    their standard policy to attempt to discredit their opponents through 
    character assassination at the same time as they attack them through 
    legal means.

    For instance, one of the recent posters of copyright material to
    alt.religion.scientology was described in passing in a Scientology 
    press release as someone who conducted execution-style killings of his 
    pets in front of his children. Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book 
    entitled _The Scandal of Scientology_, found a circular (supposedly 
    written by `a concerned neighbor') circulating around her apartment 
    block suggesting her `removal from our residence, and if possible, have

    her put under appropriate psychiatric care.' Several critics of 
    scientology have been accused (and sometimes tried) for crimes that 
    they did not commit, after having (apparently) been framed by 
    scientologists.

    Many people have used the anon server to post critical articles
    about Scientology.  I suspect the church would like it discredited. 
    (Massive amounts of information about this and the church in general 
    can be found at

    http://falcon.cc.ukans.edu/~sloth/sci/sci_index.html#diary)

Michael Jennings, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
The University of Cambridge.        mjj12@damtp.cambridge.ac.uk

-=-

Re: Internet-Finland Privacy (Green, RISKS-16.92)
Peter Kaiser 16-Mar-1995 1925 
Thu, 16 Mar 95 19:23:31 MET

Jon Green says about anon remailers that if "you use them illegally, you 
may well be identified.  Them's the breaks."

Not so fast.  A friend of mine, a political activist of the 1960s, says of
his political activities, that "I've been jailed several times, always for
something I actually did.  But none of it was illegal."  And he points out
that in court all the cases were either dismissed or found in his favor.

So the risk of abuse is clear: you may be identified, and pursued by
authority (or by the Church of Scientology) even if you have done nothing
illegal.  This has a lot to do with the original point of this thread.

___Pete  kaiser@acm.org  +33 92.95.62.97 FAX +33 92.95.50.50

---
http://www.skeptictank.org/  http://www.RonTheNut.ORG/
PGP Key: http://www.skeptictank.org/frice.pgp 
-- You love drugs!  You love drugs, don't you?!  You better
not say anything about my mother!  Don't you DARE say anything
about my mother! -- Scientology's International President (Audio
files of this nutter at http://www.linkline.com/personal/frice