From: noring@netcom.com (Jon Noring)

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.

Given that they didn't have a subpoena at this point, wouldn't the simplest way to solve this problem be to wipe the records? Somehow, I suspect that the judge is unlikely to put Caltech in contempt of court on suspicion that they're lying about the records being wiped. Now, contempt of court out of irritation... -Allen