Scientologists may subpoena anonymous remailer records

[E. ALLEN SMITH]

From: noring at 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