Re: Gary Burnore vs. Earth (Was: Value of Annon. Remailers)

[Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>]

Missouri FreeNet Administration <sysadmin@mfn.org> wrote:

> First off, let us state up front that this is an aside to the previous
> poster, and not totally on-point: feel free to hit the delete key, and
> accept our apologies if this is a problem.
> 
> About two months ago, we met the infamous Burnore & Company while 
> defending a semi-annonymous UseNet poster calling himself "Outlaw-Frog-Raper".
> It seems that in classical Burnore style "OFR" found himself the sudden
> victim of [literally] daily TOS/SPAM complaints by Burnore and Co. for making
> use of UseNet to air his decidedly anti-police positions (it's odd how "pro
> police" Burnore is, isn't it?).  

Given Gary Burnore's criminal record, he needs all the sucking up to
the police he can get.  In addition to his arrest and conviction for
molesting his girlfriend's daughter in Santa Clara, CA, he was also
arrested for unlawful assembly for his participation in Critical
Mass' bicycle blockade of the streets of San Francisco during rush
hour. (See: http://www.e-media.com/cm/sac.html )

And this criminal has the chutzpah to try and be a net Nazi as well.
This same self-righteous individual once lectured another netizen
about how it's wrong to "fight abuse with abuse".
 
>         Obviously, as defenders of this man's right to post material offensive
> to Burnore, we too came under attack.  Fortunately, we have been with
> our upstream provider for a long time, and are on *very* good terms: they told
> Burnore to keep his complaints to himself.  But I digress...

The best defense against censorious cretins like Gary Burnore is
education.  That's what the victims of the infamous "Rev."  Steve
Winter (who also lives in Raleigh, NC, BTW) had to do to counteract
his abusive tactics.  A "Steve Winter FAQ" was compiled and posted
to Usenet as well as being published on the web.  People who are the
subject of his harassment tactics have something to show to their
ISPs, employers, etc. when Winter makes his bogus threats.

>         As this "war" intensified, we attempted to determine just who in the hell
> this lunatic *was*, as nobody here is a regular Usenet follower (just when
> we have our slow periods, we'll check in with the loons to kill a couple of
> hours...).  To our surprise, we discovered that while Burnore/Databasix/etc.
> are known far and wide, the actual traffic that passes between them and the rest
> of the Earthly population is pretty well eradicated.  Here's a guy who has actually
> sat down and deleted (according to DejaNews) *tens of thousands* of his -own- posts!
> Not to mention the unknown number of posts which he has "thoughtfully taken care of
> for those others who forgot to do so themselves"...

This is the same Gary Burnore who cajoled an anonymous whistleblower
for "hiding behind a remailer" and boasted "I have nothing to hide",
although he himself attempts to gain plausible deniability for his
own posts by preventing an impartial third party from archiving
them, then claiming they were "forged" if he inserted his foot too
far into his mouth.

Not only does Gary hide his own posts behind an X-No-Archive header,
but posts critical of him have a tendency to be cancelled through
forgery.  He screwed up once and cancelled a post critical of him
that was cross-posted to one of the news.admin.net-abuse.* NGs.
Unfortunately for him, an anti-cancel-bot on that NG reposted the
cancelled message along with a copy of the forged cancellation
message sent by ... guess who ...  Gary Burnore!  Oops, Gary, can
you say "busted"?

>         The point here is that what little survives about this lunatic child
> molester (he has even successfully had his North Carolina Sex Offender record
> removed!), has almost all come through *some* annonymizer.  Whether a MixMaster,
> or Cajones (RIP) "intentional annonymizer", or an "unintentional annonymizer" 
> such as a large [cypherpunks] listserv with "bad headers".

By his own account, Gary Burnore spent nearly $30K getting the child
molestation charge plea-bargained down to a misdemeanor.  My guess
is that he has no money left to carry through on his idle threats of
frivolous legal action against those on his lengthy enemies list.
For example, when Jeff Burchell demanded a letter from Gary's lawyer
when he was demanding that Jeff turn over his remailer logs to
DataBasix, what Jeff received was a letter from Gary's girlfriend
Belinda Bryan <eridani@databasix.com> impersonating a lawyer.  For
Jeff's account of that episode, visit:

  http://calvo.teleco.ulpgc.es/listas/cypherpunks@infonex.com/HTML-1997-11/msg00536.html

>         We submit that it only takes one successful argument, even though there be
> a million such arguments available, to "proof" the value of an annoymous remailer.
> we then extend the original Burnore story (presented in part below) in further
> support.

It proves that censorship need not originate with a governmental
body.  All it takes is a determined individual with more time
available to harass than his victims do to defend against it.

> Yes, I know, at least half of you are sitting here going "now why did they
> bother us with that?".  The answer is we feel VERY strongly that if not for
> what [little] we were able to find as a result of A/R's, we would never have
> been able to figure this clown out at all.  And loco though he may be, he is
> also a *prodigious* pain in the ass, who represents a real, true threat to
> what little freedoms we still have in the US.  Burnore isn't a loner in the
> political sense: he's actually becoming pretty mainstream.  If A/R's can help
> to keep scum like him in the light, where he can't hide his hypocrises [sp?]
> through a cancel or "DejaNuke", then they are one of our most important national
> resources, and should be defended (and *funded*) as such!

The problem is that most dissidents have a weak point somewhere
where they are vulnerable, whether it be a censorious hate mail
campaign to his/her ISP or employer, mail bombing, spam baiting,
forged mailing list subscriptions, or one of countless other
denial-of-service attacks that Gary Burnore, Belinda Bryan, Billy
McClatchie (aka "Wotan"), or otther members of the DataBasix abuse
factory can conjure up.

> Just our [very biased] $.02 worth...
> 
> The full-time [yet totally volunteer] staff of Missouri FreeNet:
> 
>         J.A. Terranson, sysadmin@mfn.org
>         John Blau, jb214@mfn.org
>         Beatrice Hynes, beatrice@mfn.org
>         Frescenne "M", support@mfn.org
>         A. Pates, support@mfn.org
> 
> </LURK ON>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> <huge brevity snippage>
> 
> Consider the episode last year with Gary Burnore and DataBasix vs.
> Jeff Burchell and his Mailmasher and Huge Cajones machines.
> Made-to-order abuse appeared right on cue to reinforce the claims
> that Burnore and his girlfriend Belinda Bryan had made.  And now
> we've learned the real truth behind the whole episode.  While Gary
> Burnore was living with another girlfriend in Santa Clara, CA, he
> was also molesting her teenaged daughter.  An anonymous
> whistleblower attempted to warn the girl's mother as well as her
> school officials by anonymous e-mail.  Burnore went ballistic and
> falsely claimed "harassment".  But the whistleblower was ultimately
> vindicated when Burnore pled guilty to the molestation charge, was
> placed on probation, and was required to register as a sex offender.
> Unable to silence the whistleblower, Burnore began a campaign of
> harassment against the operators of the remailers that were being
> used to expose him.  IOW, if you can't refute the message, shoot the
> messenger.  And if you can't shoot the messenger, attempt to disable
> his means of communication (the remailers net).
> 
> I recounted this case history, which can be researched in various
> usenet archives by anyone interested, just to demonstrate that one
> man's "harassment" can well be another man's investigative
> journalism, even if the journalist or whistleblower is not in a
> position to expose him/herself to retaliation by the wrongdoer,
> which has been (coincidentally?) reported by virtually anyone who
> has dared to challenge Gary Burnore publicly.