</LURK OFF> 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?). 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... 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"... 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". 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. 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! 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.