Date: Tue, 8 Oct 1996 17:02:29 -0700 (PDT) From: NSWPP-CSUTo: nswpp@earthlink.net Subject: Whose Internet? WHOSE INTERNET? by Matt Giwer (mgiwer@worldnet.att.net) and Winston Smith, NSWPP Whose Internet is it, anyway? Powerfully, it belongs to no one. It is available to anyone willing to pay for the access. However, access is expensive, so Internet Service Providers have to charge for it. What costs you $20 to $30 per month costs him on the order of $2,000 a month to operate the $40,000 worth of hardware he paid for. There are many advantages to a completely unregulated Net but also disadvantages, and one drawback is that there is no officially recognized legal right to access the Net. Thus your access is at the whim of your service. Of course, this is America. Free enterprise rules. He wants your money, but he does not want to lose more money by serving you. When the Internet first started up it was populated by professionals from government, industry, and academia. The tricks that could be played on the Internet were jokes rather than malicious. If there were problems, the system was self-policing. Times have changed. There has always been the prankster, the eccentric egotist, the wild-eyed do-gooder, the malicious juvenile in mind if not in body whom we must put up with in life. However, another far more sinister type of individual has emerged on the Internet of late. These are the people who take it upon themselves to act as self-appointed "policemen" on the Net. The problem is that they appropriate to themselves the right to decide what should be "policed", which what material and ideas may be put on the Internet and which may not. They appoint themselves as judge, jury, and executioner of the opinions and beliefs of others. Their means of attack consist of fraud, harassment, and intimidation. One of their main methods is "mail bombing" the person whom they do not wish to speak on the Internet. They send e-mail "spams" to other people, sometimes thousands at a time, which purport to come from the targeted group or individual. Sometimes these e-mails are out-and-out forgeries containing obscene, threatening, or obnoxious material. Sometimes these people lodge bogus complaints with the targeted person's ISP that they have received such material themselves. These people do not confine themselves to harassment on the Internet. In recent months voice mail and telephone harassment, death threats against the target and his family, vandalism, and attempts to get a targeted individual dismissed from his employment have become common. If you do not voluntarily cave in to this campaign, they generally switch to a general attack on the Internet Service Provider itself, mounting repeated virus and harassment attacks to make it uneconomical for him to continue to provide you with service. If they succeed with one provider, they begin the same campaign all over again with your new provider, using the fact that you were dropped by your previous ISP as proof that you are hazardous to his economic health. There is very strong circumstantial evidence that one of the main offenders is a group of self-proclaimed "liberal humanitarians" operating mostly out of British Columbia, Stanford University, and New York City. Ostensibly formed for the purpose of conducting serious historical and social debate, these people run several open newsgroups and a web site, but appear to engage extensively in this kind of "black" operation as well. The increasingly bizarre postings to the newsgroups run by this organization give weight to the idea that they are involved in destructive and criminal activity; many of their regular posters who support the group's aims exhibit signs of mental and emotional illness to the extent that they are clearly capable of these acts, and at least one individual associated with this organization is known to have access to the kind of hardware and equipment necessary to carry out massive spams and e-mail forgeries. Realistically speaking, because they adhere to the politically correct ideologies of the current power structure and because of the virtual certainty that they have powerful and well-connected backing, these people are effectively above the law and they will continue to commit these crimes with impunity. A responsible Internet service provider will take complaints seriously and some, notably Netcom, never bother even to contact the targeted group or individual to get their side of the story. Many web sites and Internet accounts have simply been cancelled without notice, no time to find another provider allowed, no forwarding address allowed, incoming e-mail destroyed. Another problem is that when a targeted person tries to tell his ISP about the people who are trying to drive him off the Net it admittedly sounds paranoid. Well, paranoids have enemies too. Just because you're paranoid don't mean they ain't out to get you. If you have been the victim of such an attack, you are not alone. If you have a story to add please contact either of the authors above or visit Matt Giwer's web site at: http://www2.combase.com/~mgiwer/ We do not ask you to support what we believe in. But it is important for you to know what is happening and to understand that a very serious attack on freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of conscience is being carried out, and YOU can be victimized. You may not like what we believe, but try to understand that it would be extremely dangerous TO YOU for these people to succeed in silencing dissent on the Net. Unrestrained power always increases beyond its original aims and parameters. When will these tactics be used to silence Republicans, or Democrats, or others on the left wing of the political and social spectrum? When will they be used to stifle all free speech on the Internet through the imposition of government censorship? Freedom of speech is my right to say what you don't want to hear. IF THEY CAN DO IT TO US, THEY CAN DO IT TO YOU! The only protection against these vigilantes is to expose them and make sure that every ISP and every Net user knows who they are and rejects their grotesque and criminal behavior with the contempt it deserves. "This destiny does not tire, nor can it be broken, and its mantle of strength descends upon those in its service." - Francis Parker Yockey, IMPERIUM
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