Re: Councilman/Usenet porn case...

["K. Ellis" <kelli@zeus.towson.edu>]

On Thu, 28 Mar 1996, Vincent S. Gunville wrote:

> Here is an example of what anonymous remailers can 
> do.......

I'm re-forwarding you the second half of this article, because it seems 
clear that you didn't read the whole thing the first time.

> >    Suponcic, being a public official, knew his way around the local
> >    police department, and soon a detective started pounding the Net. By
> >    tracing the header information on the Usenet postings, the detective
> >    determined--O.K., this part is murky, we admit--that the messages had
> >    originated in Ohio, passed through Florida Online, an Internet
> >    provider in the Sunshine State, and then through anon.penet.fi, a free
> >    E-mail remailer service based in Finland that allows Internet users to
> >    post messages anonymously.
> > 
> >    The identity of the poster was, and is, unknown, though Suponcic has
> >    his suspicions. "It's my personal belief that the root of this is
> >    political," says the councilman, who had to get an unlisted telephone
> >    number and whose wife now wants to move.
> > 
> >    On Feb. 6, at Suponcic's urging, the Willowick city council passed a
> >    resolution asking the state and federal governments to close the
> >    "loopholes" that allowed anonymous remailers to operate outside the
> >    authority of U.S. law-enforcement officials. "Once you've achieved one
> >    of these anonymous identities, you're dangerous, and there's no way
> >    law enforcement can track it," Suponcic says. "The animal's out of
> >    control."
> > 

I know you read at least this far, but keep reading...

> >    Still not content, Suponcic contacted Steven LaTourette, the U.S.
> >    Congressman who represents his district. LaTourette's staff suspects
> >    that the problem lies with Julf Helsingius, the Finn who runs the
> >    anonymous remailer. They wrote a letter to the Finnish ambassador and
> >    sent copies to the Secretary of State and the chairman of the House
> >    Committee on International Relations. The State Department agreed last
> >    week to look into the complaint.
> > 
> >    But here's a reality check. The Finnish remailer could not have been
> >    used, since anon.penet.fi no longer transmits binary image files.
> >    Jerry Russell, who runs Florida Online and who looked into the case,
> >    says he figures the whole thing was a relatively simple prank called a
> >    sendmail spoof, in which the prankster posts a message with a phony
> >    return address. He says the Willowick police never produced a copy of
> >    the posting for him so that he could unravel the tangle for them.
> >    Indeed, when the policeman called, "he didn't really understand what
> >    he was trying to tell me," says Russell. "The average Joe Blow police
> >    detective doesn't know flip about the Internet."
> > 
> >    Neither does the average public official. And that, friends, is why
> >    stuff like the Communications Decency Act--the Christian Coalition's
> >    attempt to remove pornography from the Internet--sails through
> >    Congress.

Allow me to adjust your point to "Here's an example of what sendmail 
exploits can do".

Kathleen M. Ellis     http://zeus.towson.edu/~kelli/     kelli@zeus.towson.edu
Diverse Sexual Orientation Coll.  Towson State University  DSOC@zeus.towson.edu
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