Guess who's in the Boston Globe?
Elisabeth Riba
From the front page of the B (Metro/Region) section of today's Boston Globe:
_________________________________________________________________
Untangling an online breakup
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff, 2/20/2001
Call it an antilove story, a post-romantic feud set in the
postmodern cyber age.
When Internet aficionados Gary Kadet, a Cambridge author, and Marion
Mackerwicz, a bodybuilder from Whitman, met three years ago at a
party, they fanned the flames of affection with flirtatious e-mails
and online chat.
But when their affair ended, their amorous exchanges soured into
sarcasm, then insults, and finally not-so-veiled bodily threats.
''Who would they try to pin it on if you were found dead, Gary?''
wrote Seapetal in the Boston Dungeon, a low-profile, online watering
hole for bondage enthusiasts. Kadet says the message was from
Mackerwicz; Seapetal, he said, is one of her screen names.
''I will kill her,'' read another Boston Dungeon message, penned in
German, by Gothimuscle. Mackerwicz says that it's clearly a threat
against her, and that Kadet is its author.
As the online spat grew nastier - scurrilous e-mails, unflattering
nude photos placed on Web pages, charges and countercharges of
chat-room stalking - Kadet and Mackerwicz headed to court for matching
restraining orders.
But authorities trying to enforce them are at a loss: The alleged
harassment between Kadet and Mackerwicz, they note, has occurred
online, under assumed screen names, in a world that doesn't really
exist.
''Where is the venue on this thing?'' asked one police officer
involved in the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ''Where
does the crime actually occur? He's there and she's there, but where
is the Internet?''
Since the Internet boom of the late-1990s, cyber-crime has been a hot
topic among law enforcement agencies, particularly in light of
headline-making cases of online child pornography and electronic
fraud. Massachusetts lawmakers have taken computer stalking seriously,
including it in a new antiharassment law that was passed in October.
But investigators say it's tough to crack such cases, given the
sophisticated, constantly evolving high-tech methods in use, current
Internet privacy laws, and an online culture rooted in anonymity.
State Assistant Attorney General John Grossman, who heads the
high-tech computer crimes division, said finding out for sure who is
harassing whom on the Web often means issuing subpoenas to online
services, demanding the real identities behind the screen names. But
some online companies don't keep records of their users for more than
a few weeks.
''The law hasn't been clarified in this area,'' he said. ''But if a
serious threat were issued in a chat room, or if someone was being
stalked in a chat room, we would treat that as a violation of the law
and we would investigate it and prosecute it.''
Parry Aftab, executive director of Cyberangels, which helps police
track down cyber-stalkers, said she receives about 200 such complaints
every day from around the world, and she said they have to be taken
seriously. Online threats last year have resulted in at least two
murders in the United States, she said.
''There's a difference between cyber-harassment and cyber-stalking,''
but harassment ''is just as illegal,'' Aftab said. ''In real life,
would somebody be able to take your picture, put it on a naked body,
and put it on in the street? Online, people think they are anonymous,
so they do stuff because they think they are anonymous.''
Still, ''we can track and trace everybody on the Internet,'' she
added. ''You leave a trail of cyber-breadcrumbs everywhere you go.''
Were the Kadet-Mackerwicz feud, which has riven the community of
bondage enthusiasts, to be taken to that level, it is unclear who the
law would declare as the real stalker.
When Kadet, who is fond of zippered leather jackets and exotic pet
lizards, first met Mackerwicz, he found he had a lot in common with
the buffed blonde. They kept in touch through electronic messages,
then found themselves spending more time together as Kadet introduced
her to people in the S&M scene, which he was researching for his
novel, ''D/S: An Anti-Love Story.'' Kadet says the romance faded when
Mackerwicz grew more and more possessive of him, building Web sites
dedicated to him. Mackerwicz, however, says she ended the
relationship.
Kadet contends that Mackerwicz grew so bitter after their breakup that
she sat outside his building at odd hours of the day and once put
leaflets on cars in his neighborhood with fake invitations to orgies
at his house.
When he called the police, Kadet says, she took her mischief online,
building pornographic Web sites featuring his online identity,
besieging him with Internet death threats and wreaking havoc against
him under numerous screen names - charges which Mackerwicz denies.
''She has been identified as `Seapetal' in open court,'' Kadet said.
''Under this screen name, she e-mailed my friend's mother a fictitious
list of [the friend's] sexual conduct.
''This was one of the many factors that convinced me to go out and get
a restraining order against her, but it backfired and she got one
against me.''
Mackerwicz, Kadet maintains, also committed ''stalking-by-proxy,''
stuffing his friends' electronic mailboxes with pictures of ''virtual
turds'' and voodoo dolls accompanied by such cryptic messages as
''`Now you know how it feels.'''
But Mackerwicz insists she's the true victim.
According to Mackerwicz, Kadet posted nude body-building pictures of
her on the Web and sent out electronic junk mail filled with her
personal information. Kadet harassed her so continually in the Boston
Dungeon chat room, she said, that she has cut down her visits there
from five hours per day to barely 20 minutes.
''I get sick of having him attack me in the chat room in front of
people I might know,'' said Mackerwicz, a former Whitman selectman, in
a recent telephone interview. Kadet, she said, created a home page
with her picture ''and made [it] out to appear that I had made it up
against myself. It said I had 47 personalities, 47 screen names on
AOL, that I didn't have a life.''
The law seems to be on Mackerwicz's side; a judge recently upheld a
yearlong restraining order against Kadet, barring him from chat rooms
while she's there. A similar order Kadet obtained against Mackerwicz
was vacated after 10 days.
Still, Mackerwicz says, Kadet flouts the order with impunity.
Days after it was granted, Mackerwicz called Cambridge police to
report that Kadet was harassing her. Just as police were set to
dispatch a cruiser, she said, they realized the chat room was not a
real place.
Without grand jury subpoenas and a serious effort from investigators,
Kadet and Mackerwicz continue to haggle over the restraining orders in
court.
The biannual Fetish Fleamarket, which draws thousands of bondage
enthusiasts, generated a flurry of filings in a Brockton court. Kadet
asked a judge to suspend the restraining order that barred him from
the show if Mackerwicz was there, so he could promote his book.
But Mackerwicz stayed away from the flea market, saying she didn't
want trouble. Though she says she regrets that Kadet and his friends
had been harassed online, Mackerwicz says she's not responsible.
This story ran on page B1 of the Boston Globe on 2/20/2001.
(c) Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.
--
----------> Elisabeth Anne Riba * l...@osmond-riba.org <----------
"[She] is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.
They control information. Don't ever piss one off."
- Spider Robinson, "Callahan Touch"
pijay
>
>
>From the front page of the B (Metro/Region) section of today's Boston Globe:
>
Yet another nail in the coffin of Kadet's credibility. Very illuminating,
thanks
for posting.
~ ~ pijay{LK}
--
Looking for the scene in South West England?
Join us at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BDSMSouthWestUK
Elisabeth Riba
> The law seems to be on Mackerwicz's side; a judge recently upheld a
> yearlong restraining order against Kadet, barring him from chat rooms
> while she's there. A similar order Kadet obtained against Mackerwicz
> was vacated after 10 days.
I wonder... Would it be worth enticing her to SSBB, to keep Kadet out?
Mr Etaoin
>
> From the front page of the B (Metro/Region) section of today's Boston Globe:
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> Untangling an online breakup
>
> By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff, 2/20/2001
>
> Call it an antilove story, a post-romantic feud set in the
> postmodern cyber age.
>
> When Internet aficionados Gary Kadet, a Cambridge author, and Marion
> Mackerwicz, a bodybuilder from Whitman, met three years ago at a
> party, they fanned the flames of affection with flirtatious e-mails
> and online chat.
>
> But when their affair ended, their amorous exchanges soured into
> sarcasm, then insults, and finally not-so-veiled bodily threats.
Weren't they both doing tag-team attacks on ssbb last summer, under
multiple names?
A pox on both.
--
ETAOIN: Nevertheless, you are in a cage, and I am free to walk
about.
THE SNAKE: Oh, you have your cage, too. You test your bars as often
as I test mine.
Charles Finney, The Circus of Dr. Lao
John Warren
news:3A92976A...@jUNKhotmail.com...
> Weren't they both doing tag-team attacks on ssbb last summer, under
> multiple names?
>
> A pox on both.
I don't think Seapetal had anything to do with SSBB. I was chatting with
her a while back and she confused IRC with Usenet giving me the idea she was
unaware of what Usenet was.
It is well within Kadet's paranoia to make weak or abusive attacks on
himself so he can don the "abused person" cloak that evidently he tried to
use before the court with limited success
--
Diversified Services supplying toys, books and videos to the scene since
1992
www.diversified--services.com
New department added on 2/09/01 now carrying The Pain Game (Cleo Dubois)
Psyfuru
wrt Kadet et al
>Weren't they both doing tag-team attacks on ssbb last summer, under
>multiple names?
>
I don't think both. There were many Kadet"ish" cross posts where a number of
persons were attacked, including one gent who tried to get others who had been
dragged into the cross posting to message Deja to nuke their posts, in an
attempt to clear his screen name of the attacks.
The woman written of in the Globe article was attacked in some of the posts,
including a posting, here, of the chatroom conversation that is mentioned in
the story, but I can't recall that she ever responded in any of the threads, if
so it was minimal.
The Punch-and-Judy tenor of the Globe article was not in evidence either here
or on apb or alms, two groups where the cross posting was also happening.
Just my recollection. I know neither party.
f
DonSideB
might be wise not to take sides.
don
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. - Edward R Murrow
SSBB Diplomatic Corps: Tidewater Virginia
SilverOz
BenUK <b...@nospam.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Elisabeth Riba <l...@osmond-riba.org> wrote:
>
>> According to Mackerwicz, <snip> Kadet harassed her so continually in the Boston
>> Dungeon chat room, she said, that she has cut down her visits there
>> from five hours per day to barely 20 minutes.
>> made [it] out to appear that I had made it up
>> against myself. It said I had 47 personalities, 47 screen names on
>> AOL, that I didn't have a life.''
>
>doesn't have a life???
>
I've been known to spend 5 hours or more a day on IRC.
It's noyt *all* I've been doing, usenet takes priority!
SilverOz
- what's this "life" thing anyway?
Mr Etaoin
>
> "Mr Etaoin" <mret...@jUNKhotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3A92976A...@jUNKhotmail.com...
>
> > Weren't they both doing tag-team attacks on ssbb last summer, under
> > multiple names?
> >
> > A pox on both.
>
> I don't think Seapetal had anything to do with SSBB. I was chatting with
> her a while back and she confused IRC with Usenet giving me the idea she was
> unaware of what Usenet was.
>
> It is well within Kadet's paranoia to make weak or abusive attacks on
> himself so he can don the "abused person" cloak that evidently he tried to
> use before the court with limited success
In that case, I owe her an apology.
From what I saw of him here, he seemed to be an unpleasant guy.
Posting multiple negative reviews on Amazon.com to damage someone's
sales is not a tactic normal people would use on an enemy.
Even if she is a bit unbalanced, she could do better than a
sociopath.
dev
news:3A9358A9...@JUNKhotmail.com...
> Even if she is a bit unbalanced, she could do better than a
> sociopath.
That's got a nice 'ring' to it!
Dev
--
remove the 00 to reply