Weasel nymserver closed due to child porn investigation
Johannes Kroeger
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On Monday, September 1st, 1997, a police officer from the German
"Internet Patrol" in Munich contacted my provider and me by phone
and informed us that he investigates a case of child pornography
posted through weasel.owl.de and the nym.alias.net mail-to-news
gateway on August 17th. Today my provider officially told me to
close my nymserver because they fear legal hassles if more illegal
material is sent from weasel during the present investigations.
I've taken the following measures to comply with their request:
1. Mail to se...@weasel.owl.de bounces with the error message:
"Sending mail from weasel.owl.de is disabled until further notice."
Remailer operators, please add se...@weasel.owl.de to your destination
block lists.
2. Weasel.owl.de does not allow creation of new accounts.
3. Mail to weasel.owl.de users will be remailed as usual, until I
have transferred the accounts to another nymserver. I would be very
grateful if the admins of nym.alias.net or anon.efga.org are willing
to host weasel's nyms until the investigations are closed and weasel
is hopefully up again.
Last but not least: the only police contact until now was by phone;
neither my provider nor I were forced to copy or decrypt anything.
--
Johannes Kroeger <ha...@squirrel.owl.de>
Send mail with subject "send pgp-key" to get my PGP key
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NOBODY
Isn't there a way to screen out "pictures" from the nymservers, I think they
are called binaries and just let text postings go through. This way the
nymservers could avoid this kind of problem in the future. Doesn't Deja
News do something similar?
Isn't there a newsserver called sextilla or something that lets anybody post
anything? So anybody into adult stuff wouldn't be "deprived."
Why would anybody need a nymserver to post pornography if there is an open
newsserver devoted to pornography, except a child pornographer And since the
purpose of nymserver is to protect private communications and not promote
aberrant child pornography (ugh!), shouldn't something be done, just on
general principles, to keep the nymservers from being used for such a
despicable purpose?
How much trouble would it be to set things up to prevent child pornography
from being posted via a nym and wouldn't it be worth the time and trouble to
prevent the postings.
Just a thought.
In article <1997090722...@squirrel.owl.de>, ha...@squirrel.owl.de
says...
Johannes Kroeger
On 8 Sep 1997 03:12:54 GMT, NOBODY <nob...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Isn't there a way to screen out "pictures" from the nymservers, I think they
> are called binaries and just let text postings go through. This way the
> nymservers could avoid this kind of problem in the future. Doesn't Deja
> News do something similar?
As I've explained in another posting, filtering binaries is not a solution
because even a nymserver reply address in a legally questionable posting
would get the nymserver operator in trouble (at least in Germany).
The posting itself doesn't need to be binary (in this case, it was, though),
but may be something like this
From: so...@remailer.domain
Reply-To: x...@nymserver.de
Subject: Child porn pictures
Please contact me if you are interested in child porn pictures
No filter would catch this kind of messages!
> Isn't there a newsserver called sextilla or something that lets anybody post
> anything? So anybody into adult stuff wouldn't be "deprived."
News.sexzilla.com AFAIK. But they can't post or read the stuff anonymously
(I don't know of anonymizing NNTP proxies).
> Why would anybody need a nymserver to post pornography if there is an open
> newsserver devoted to pornography, except a child pornographer And since the
> purpose of nymserver is to protect private communications and not promote
> aberrant child pornography (ugh!), shouldn't something be done, just on
> general principles, to keep the nymservers from being used for such a
> despicable purpose?
>
> How much trouble would it be to set things up to prevent child pornography
> from being posted via a nym and wouldn't it be worth the time and trouble to
> prevent the postings.
If you could write a filter that prevents posting of child pornography and
nothing else, I would install it.
Jay Stotzky
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On Sun, 7 Sep 1997 22:48:16 +0200, Johannes Kroeger
<ha...@squirrel.owl.de>wrote:
<snip>
Johannes -
Yet another black day for privacy on the net.
Thanks for pointing out that this was your upstream provider's decision, not
yours. Who is your provider, BTW? A university or a commercial ISP? Granted,
you say that Weasel is closed "during the present investigations," but if the
Sohm/Compuserve case is any judge, it may be quite some time before your
provider gives you the go ahead to bring Weasel back online.
What strikes me the most here is the effort it seems to have taken to get you
shut down. In Finland, it took a court order before Julf closed penet rather
than give in. In the US, it took a concerted effort by spambaiters and kooks
before Jeff Burchell pulled the plug on Cajones. In Germany, all it takes is a
phone call. Sad, but not surprising.
Good luck to you, Johannes, and thanks for everything you've done. Hope it all
works out, and I hope you're back in business soon.
Best regards,
Jay
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--
Jay Stotzky <w...@cbobk.pbz> Key ID 0xA8006545
Fingerprint 64 96 C9 1F 11 9D CF C6 82 5B 5A 1F A4 FD 32 A3
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Apply ROT-13 to obtain real address (sorry, just sick of spam)
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"Indecision may or may not be my problem" - Jimmy Buffett
Johannes Kroeger
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On 07 Sep 1997, I wrote:
> 3. Mail to weasel.owl.de users will be remailed as usual, until I
> have transferred the accounts to another nymserver. I would be very
> grateful if the admins of nym.alias.net or anon.efga.org are willing
> to host weasel's nyms until the investigations are closed and weasel
> is hopefully up again.
Andy Dustman, the operator of the redneck nymserver at anon.efga.org,
has now installed the weasel accounts on the EFGA server. This means:
1. I don't have any data of pseudonymous users available anymore.
2. Mail to <you...@weasel.owl.de> will be forwarded to
<your...@anon.efga.org> ("_w" for weasel).
^^
3. Mail to {send,config}@weasel.owl.de bounces with the following,
now somewhat more detailed error message:
Sending mail from weasel.owl.de is disabled until further notice. Please
read <1997090722...@squirrel.owl.de> in alt.privacy.anon-server for
more information. The accounts have been moved to redneck (anon.efga.org):
<you...@weasel.owl.de> is now <your...@anon.efga.org>.
--
Johannes Kroeger <ha...@squirrel.owl.de>
Send mail with subject "send pgp-key" to get my PGP key
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Johannes Kroeger
On Mon, 08 Sep 1997 11:08:22 GMT, Jay Stotzky <w...@cbobk.pbz> wrote:
> Thanks for pointing out that this was your upstream provider's decision, not
> yours. Who is your provider, BTW? A university or a commercial ISP?
My provider is PriOWL (Privates Internet Ostwestfalen-Lippe) in Paderborn.
They are a small non-profit organization and get their connectivity from the
university and the local XLink PoP (a small computer and network company).
> Granted, you say that Weasel is closed "during the present investigations,"
> but if the Sohm/Compuserve case is any judge, it may be quite some time
> before your provider gives you the go ahead to bring Weasel back online.
I hope the investigations will be closed soon, because there is nothing to
investigate at owl.de! Even the nym that caused this trouble doesn't exist
anymore.
> What strikes me the most here is the effort it seems to have taken to get you
> shut down. In Finland, it took a court order before Julf closed penet rather
> than give in. In the US, it took a concerted effort by spambaiters and kooks
> before Jeff Burchell pulled the plug on Cajones. In Germany, all it takes is a
> phone call. Sad, but not surprising.
Not surprising at all :-( The PRIowl admins ARE privacy-friendly, and most
of them liked the nymserver, but they fear trouble with the police (even
seizure of their equipment is possible) if more questionable material is
posted during the investigations. Therefore a majority of the admins decided
that I should close the nymserver until the investigations are over.
The remailer at m...@squirrel.owl.de is not affected by this decision.
> Good luck to you, Johannes, and thanks for everything you've done.
You're welcome.
> Hope it all works out, and I hope you're back in business soon.
I hope so.
> Best regards,
>
> Jay
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>
> --
> Jay Stotzky <w...@cbobk.pbz> Key ID 0xA8006545
> Fingerprint 64 96 C9 1F 11 9D CF C6 82 5B 5A 1F A4 FD 32 A3
> Key --> finger or keyserver | Encrypted mail preferred
> Apply ROT-13 to obtain real address (sorry, just sick of spam)
> ROT-13 = each letter +/- 13 letters in English alphabet
>
> "Indecision may or may not be my problem" - Jimmy Buffett