Somethings broke in the backbone relay, the CDR has split. I sent the note out and didn't see Tim's response, but do see JAT's. Cool ;) On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, J.A. Terranson wrote:

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, Tim May wrote:

<huge snip>

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Were he in the U.S., I'd expect he'd face serious charges. Being that he's in Australia, as far as I know, I doubt extradition will occur.

I disagree (although I would not have several years ago).

The FBI has been learning to use international extradition over the last two years or so, and are actually getting to be quite good at it from what I hear.

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And even if he were prosecuted, by Oz or by the U.S., his various articles indicate "mental disturbance" could be a winning defense, with him ordered to get back on his Prozac or Zoloft or whatever.

I would dearly love to see this idiot named an "enemy combatant", if for no other reason that to laugh my ass off. To paraphrase both Tim *and* Mattd: "Proffr Needs Killing" - rlmao!

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The questions being asked of Jim may have to do with the Feds making the only prosecution they can make: that those passing on such threats via mailing lists are somehow guilty of some crime. This is just speculation on my part.

If these are indeed the types of questions being asked, I would be very surprised. While *anonymous* remailers are very definitely on their radar, I cannot see any reason why a CDR node would be of interest (other than to establish the actual delivery chain). As someone who works closely with a bunch of these guys, I can state with authority that the FBI is technically, um, less than what the public thinks they are. A LOT less, at least technically. Nevertheless, the guys (and gals) they hire are generally a good cross-section of smart and educated middle classers, who are quite capable of learning what they need to know. I would guess that the operational questions were just that - attempts to understand the operation of the CDR system.

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If so, the case may hinge on issues of "common carrier" status.

Highly unlikely - CCS is a concept they are all familiar with, and it quite obviously does not apply here.

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Also, I believe Congress passed a bill explicitly saying that sysops are not liable for the e-mail passing through their systems...Declan will likely have the latest on this.

No, I think you are referring to the side effect of the Prodigy Decision. Either way though, you are correct that your average sysop enjoys some limited immunities here.

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Anyway, I'll bet good money this is the series of messages in question. Nothing else I have seen either rises to this level or seems to involve Pennsylvania in any significant way.

You sure there were no SPAM travel guides making outrageously prosecutable claims that Pennsylvania was a Good Place To Visit? <snicker>

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--Tim May

-- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org

"Every living thing dies alone." Donnie Darko

-- -- ravage@ssz.com jchoate@open-forge.com www.ssz.com www.open-forge.com

On Fri, 12 Sep 2003, James A. Donald wrote:

On 12 Sep 2003 at 17:46, J.A. Terranson wrote:

...

The FBI has been learning to use international extradition over the last two years or so, and are actually getting to be quite good at it from what I hear.

This would greatly surprise me, for government bureaucracies are notoriously incompetent at dealing with anyone they cannot have pistol whipped.

As I understand it, they're simply having similar agencies from other countries doing the appropriate PW, followed by an extradition from those countries willing to do so.

If police bureaucracy X has busted someone for their own reasons, they may well hand him over to police bureacracy Y, but police bureaucracy X is not going to bust someone because police bureacracy Y wants him.

There has been a lot of change in this area over the last two years.

If Professor rat had killed a cop, or seriously pissed off an important politician, the FBI might get its act together enough and swallow its pride sufficiently to manage a successful extradition, but for this sort of minor crap, nothing will happen.

The feebs are in a position right now where it's not a matter of "swallowing their pride", but rather a "corporate mandate" if you will: they have been *ordered* to make these types of extraditions happen. Of course, the next [obvious] question is where did I get this information? From work: we had an incident that resulted in an FBI call and international players from third world countries. If it's just Mattd they're looking for, then I too doubt that he's worth putting the wheels in motion for, but if it's something they consider "real", I have absolutely no doubt that they are now in a position to successfully complete an international extradition

--digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XmSLOgHTIX7igiupnUZhy6VfVZRNQh4hsbrOXBMG 4WS9OF42DQA+DowPFP7Z5UXhBISFqDUt0ssgL4sf3

-- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin@mfn.org "Every living thing dies alone." Donnie Darko

James Donald wrote:

And this, of course, assumes that Professor Rat is real, rather than an american agent provocateur sshing to Australia. For an Australian, he seems oddly obsessed with US figures.

Based on when Rat began to post, and the gush of charges allegedly made against him elsewhere and in the US, James would appear to be probably right about the nut-case being an agent provocateur, either government run or self-appointed. Self-appointed provocateurs all too often wind up working for the authorities once they gain access to or credibility with enemies of the state. Still, some may recall that CJ was charged similarly, but still went to jail. Not that going to jail clears a rat, rather it may indicate a deeper deception. What happens to a person during jail, facing charges, being questioned, seemingly cleared, then reappearing behaving even more provocatively, fits the pattern of the agent provocateur. But inducing a party to behave like an agent provocateur is a methodology oft used by handlers of agents. Smearing a genuine dissident with charges of being a government agent is also a hoary technique. Fostering dissent is the favorite way governments assure their survival by being forever vigilante, forever being needed to protect the unwary, forever cooking up new threats to the homeland. Indeed without dissent, especially vociferous and verging on violence, governments might wither, as commies and fascists well know and backscratch each other. Professor Rat does indeed appear to be a pro, reminds of the gang that pokied Jim Bell before 9/11, and now are eager to keep the counter-cyber-terrorism careers aflowering. Witness Jessica Stern and a host of others, feeding and being fed by the justice cartel worldwide, pleased as shit at the bountiful evidence-provocation-fabricator: the Net. If cypherpunks did not exist, prosecutors and rats would have to invent it, in the narc lab, oops, DARPA.

Tim writes:

My comment is that this "Professor Rat," whose posts I have not seen for as long as lne.com has been my feed, is probably in some real difficulty. His posts are very direct threats, not veiled in any of the vague, political "politicians ought to be given a fair trial and then hanged" or even the "I hope Washington is nuked" sorts.

"Professor Rat" goes to his own folder in my Procmail script. I occasionally skim it, but mostly I just delete it when it expands to many megabytes. I hope this isn't going to be another one of those cases where some federal judge reads list messages completely out of context, and concludes that some plot is afoot to blow up the federal government. Perhaps Professor Rat is a federal agent hoping to bait some list member into publicly cheering when he criticizes high-ranking public officials. Or perhaps Professor Rat just made the mistake of playing Paintball on the weekends while subscribed to the Cypherpunks list.

(One rule of thumb I use is to never, ever use actual names of burrowcrats. Except for a few at the top, I don't even make any effort to remember the names. It's hard to be charged with making a direct, credible threat when no specific person is either named or alluded to.)

Allusions work, like "the coke-snorting C student who drove his car drunk into somebody's hedge." I wouldn't necessarily leap to the conclusion Professor Rat lives in Australia. Perhaps he just has has a shell there. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"