On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 George@orwellian.org wrote:

Declan wrote: # # Yes, clearly I was wrong and this must be the real thing. # I urge you to start an online campaign straightaway!

I'm stunned you think this is a joke. ^^^^

You misspelled "hoax". Think about it. You know how secure SMTP isn't? Go read the RFC, then you can telnet to the SMTP port of any open relay and create a message that appears to come from anywhere or anyone you like. Choate even still runs an open relay for your convenience. There is *NO* evidence that this isn't a hoax. Making a hoax would be so damn easy it isn't even funny. All that has to happen is for some monkey out there to read the "sircam" story and the "dmitry" story and decide he wants to yank the cypherpunks' collective chain (and/or discredit a reporter). There is a (remote) possibility that it could be real. But if so it is totally deniable and reporting it would cause a loss of credibility. The only way to find out if it's real is to save it, wait for more facts about FBI operations and structures to come out, and then the "smoking gun" would point at it only if it refers to or confirms any things that are true at this time but wouldn't be known to a hoaxer at this time. Bear