Weird message from someone named "NIPC"

[Ray Dillinger]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001 George at 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