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Re: Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records
[email protected] (Timothy C. May) writes:
>some details. (To Jim Byrd, that "alumni account at Cal Tech" that you
>mentioned was one of the Cypherpunks remailers at Caltech that our own
>pioneering Hal Finney runs.)
From: [email protected] (Jon Noring)
Subject: [X-Post, Caltech OFFICIALLY Speaks] -AB-,penet, and Caltech
*******************************************************
In article <[email protected]> [email protected] (Richard E. Fagen) writes:
On Wednesday afternoon, February 8th, three private
investigators visited the Caltech Security Office and the Campus
Computing Organization. The P.I.s wanted to know the identity of
the holder of the account "tc" on the Caltech Alumni Association
computer system (alumni.caltech.edu). They claimed to have
gotten the account name from the anon.penet.fi server via the
Helsinki police. Due to the unusual nature of this request, the
P.I.s were told that Caltech would need more information before
this type of information could be given out. Later that day, an
attorney representing the Church of Scientology called the
campus computing support office demanding the name of the
account holder. The attorney claimed that a document had been
stolen from a CoS computer system, and that the document had
been posted to the a.r.s newsgroup from alumni.caltech.edu via
the anon remailer. (The claim was the document was created on
Jan. 21 and appeared in a.r.s. on Jan. 24). The computing support
staff did not divulge the name of the account holder, and the CoS
attorney was referred to the Caltech General Counsel's office.
The Computer Crime Unit of the Bunco-Forgery Division of the
LAPD subsequently contacted Caltech security and asked for
more information on the case. The LAPD wanted to know if a
breakin to the CoS computer had occurred from the alumni
system. Caltech told the LAPD that no evidence of such a break
in could be found. The LAPD requested and was given the name
of the "tc" account holder with the understanding that this
information would not be divulged. A couple days after that
Caltech was informed that the LAPD could find no evidence that
a crime had been committed.
In the ensuing several days, the attorney and P.I.s representing
CoS made repeated attempts (both via phone and by physically
appearing on the Caltech and JPL campuses) to obtain the
contents of the tc account and also the tape backups (the account
holder had admitted to deleting most of the contents of the
account). The CoS attorney produced a letter allegedly signed by
the tc account holder allowing CoS permission to get the data
stored on that account and the backups. Due to irregularities
with both the letter and a phone conversation with the account
holder, permission for CoS to have access to the data in the
account was denied by Caltech.
After the CoS attorney and P.I.s continued their attempts to get
the data, Caltech retained the counsel of an independent law
firm. Soon after that, all communication with the CoS ended. One
phone call from the tc account holder requesting the backup data
was received by the computing support staff. This request was
also denied. That was the last communication with the account
holder.
Our analysis is that Caltech was caught in the middle of what
appears to be an internal matter between the Church of
Scientology and one of its members, who also happened to be an
account holder on the Caltech alumni computer. No evidence that
a Caltech computer was used to break into another computer, or
was used to store stolen documents could ever be found.
I hope this serves to shine a little light on this chain of events.
Rich Fagen
Director, Campus Computing Organization
Caltech
****************** end of cross-post ********************
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