Prison Terms For Spammer Ralsky, Scientology DoS Attacker 328
tsu doh nimh writes "Alan Ralsky, the 64-year-old dubbed the 'Godfather of Spam,' was sentenced to 51 months in prison on Monday, the Washington Post's Security Fix blog reports. According to anti-spam group Spamhaus.org, Ralsky has been spamming since at least 1997, using dozens of aliases and tens of thousands of 'zombies' or hacked PCs to relay junk e-mail. Also sentenced — to 40 months in jail — was Ralsky's 48-year-old son-in-law, Scott K. Bradley, and two other men named last year in a 41-count indictment for wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering and violations of the CAN-SPAM Act."
And eldavojohn writes "19-year-old Dmitriy Guzner, Anonymous member and Scientology DDoS attacker, received one year and one day in jail for his admitted crime. His sentence could have been a maximum ten years. According to the Church of Scientology, Anonymous has harassed and attacked them with '8,139 threatening phone calls, 3.6 million e-mails, 141 million hits on its website, ten acts of vandalism against its property, 22 bomb threats, and eight death threats against Church leaders.'"
Re:Church of Scientology (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not a lazy man at least (Score:4, Interesting)
Project Chanology has nothing to do with the orchestration of DDoS attacks and harassment attempts with the Church of Scientology.
The members of the small group that decided to perform these attacks did this on their own which caused losts of infighting between Anonymous since performing anything illegal goes against Project Chanology's cause.
Ok... (Score:3, Interesting)
8,139 threatening phone calls, 3.6 million e-mails, 141 million hits on its website, ten acts of vandalism against its property, 22 bomb threats, and eight death threats against Church^Wsect leaders
Where do I send fan mail for this guy?
Anonymous is winning (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Church of Scientology (Score:4, Interesting)
When was the last time you were harassed by a Scientology member?
When one of my University teachers became a scientologist and hijacked the whole class for months to discuss Dianetics as the "new science for management and self-improvement for success in the 21st century".
Problem is that since Scientology is not registered as a religion in my country, the school's heads were not aware of the inappropriateness of her actions and it took over three months of protests from several students for them to find out and sack her.
Tor by default (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see request for Tor by default [ubuntu.com] in Ubuntu. What about other distros or other onion routers? That would increase the base. Amnesty or Human Rights Watch or The Democracy Center all have a stake in onion routing. To take the thread in the same direction, but further, the group that backed Bush may have left the top offices in the administration, but it has not entirely left power. And the voting machine problem is not yet solved. Those are still under their sphere of influence.
Phil Zimmermann's Why I Wrote PGP [philzimmermann.com] and OpenSSH's SSH FAQ [openbsd.org] are two works that come to mind first about privacy. Most countries recognize the natural right to peaceable assembly. Do the corporations that now have larger budgets and more political clout than some small countries also those rights? You know the answer. The price of freedom is not just eternal vigilance, the cost also includes acting to proactively resolve threats to that freedom.
Re:141 million hits on its website? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:dark side of the coin (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually, it's not your mailbox. At least in the States, it's the US Postal Service's mailbox. You're allowed to take things out of it. You're allowed to leave things in it for other USPS workers to deliver. That's it.
To be really pedantic about it, it's illegal for me (a private citizen who doesn't work for the USPS) to put a Christmas card in "my neighbor's mailbox".
I hate junk mail as much as you do, and for the same reasons. But junk mail's not the same as spam. The assholes that send junk mail pay the USPS to deliver it. The USPS delivers it to the USPS's mailboxes, and I'm stuck with the task of shredding it. If I really don't like a particular piece of junk mail, I can go to the USPS and fill out a little form that says (in effect) that I think it's pr0n. If I say those Capital Zero credit card offers are too sexy for my tastes (hey, I know it's weird, but your kink may not be my kink...), the USPS is forced to take me at my word, and they will stop delivering them.
Re:Church of Scientology (Score:1, Interesting)
"The head of the Galactic Federation (76 planets around larger stars visible from here) (founded 95,000,000 years ago, very space opera) solved overpopulation (250 billion or so per planet, 178 billion on average) by mass implanting. He caused people to be brought to Teegeeack (Earth) and put an H-Bomb on the principal volcanos (Incident II) and then the Pacific area ones were taken in boxes to Hawaii and the Atlantic area ones to Las Palmas and there "packaged".
His name was Xenu. He used renegades. Various misleading data by means of circuits etc. was placed in the implants.
When through with his crime loyal officers (to the people) captured him after six years of battle and put him in an electronic mountain trap where he still is. "They" are gone. The place (Confederation) has since been a desert. The length and brutality of it all was such that this Confederation never recovered. The implant is calculated to kill (by pneumonia etc) anyone who attempts to solve it. This liability has been dispensed with by my tech development.
One can freewheel through the implant and die unless it is approached as precisely outlined. The "freewheel" (auto-running on and on) lasts too long, denies sleep etc and one dies. So be careful to do only Incidents I and II as given and not plow around and fail to complete one thetan at a time.
In December 1967 I knew someone had to take the plunge. I did and emerged very knocked out, but alive. Probably the only one ever to do so in 75,000,000 years. I have all the data now, but only that given here is needful.
One's body is a mass of individual thetans stuck to oneself or to the body.
One has to clean them off by running incident II and Incident I. It is a long job, requiring care, patience and good auditing. You are running beings. They respond like any preclear. Some large, some small.
Thetans believed they were one. This is the primary error. Good luck.
Re:scientology (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, as a historian, I see the Bible, at least the Old Testament for what it is, an oral history and moral code system. The creation of the Earth and all that isn't from a guy who herded goats 4,000 years ago, but its the oral tradition of all the peoples in the region, originally probably from Persia or western India. The Deluge myth might even date back to the end of the Ice Age, or at least the flooding of the Persian Gulf area or other megafloods.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(prehistoric) [wikipedia.org]
Also, the Bible isn't just a Christian text, its also a Jewish text and is held in regard by Muslims, its just not their book.
Re:Church of Scientology (Score:1, Interesting)
This is what is known as a "chilling effect". A great tragedy befalls a handful of individuals, but all individuals realize it could have just as easily have been them. This causes massive behavioral change on a wide scale.
You're trying to explain empathy to an individual that is most likely sliding down the sociopathic scale. I share your desire to rally the masses in an ethical movement, but I fear you are wasting your time on this site.
Re:L. Con Hubbard (Score:1, Interesting)
"The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than win.
The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly. "
According to Scientology, its critics are, "Suppressive persons" who deserve to be "utterly destroyed" and "eliminated quietly and without sorrow."
Can you apply that in ways besides your RTS GAME? Scientology is not a game. I suggest a little time online. find a few of the affidavits about lives destroyed by people who were in too deeply when the truth ofthe cult was revealed tot hem, and their lives were destroyed. "Disconnection" "Coerced abortions" Racism within Scientology "Human trafficking" "Child labour" "Rehabilitation Project Force"
Any of these things can be portrayed in a game, or even a movie by real actors. But it is outside of games, computer generated bullshit, and on down that line, and it's in real life. This organization uses intimidation (including death threats) to convince people they need to go along with this. Some people are convinced they're just making a sacrifice. But so much of it is blatantly illegal in so many countries where Scientology exists. But the governments there are afraid of the "freedom of religion" thing which so broadly makes them open to criticism, so very little is often done about investigation or especially prosecution.
Re:Church of Scientology (Score:3, Interesting)
You lump bomb threats in with spam and DoS, yet I can't recall any incident in the history of computing where spam or DoS directly caused a person's death.
The core of the matter is there are rampant abuses of civil liberties, and the CoS is a highly visible icon of such abuse. If the CoS is allowed to continue, then we open the door for any and all wacked-out works of fiction to be labeled as "religion", and to benefit from the irrational exclusions and bypasses applied thereto.
Really, what's preventing me from founding the "Church of Spam" and claiming that UCE is protected religion speech ? We could all worship the holy Tomlinson, and each level of (paid) membership would open up access to secret RFCs until one attains "High Daemon" rank, where the subtle intricacies of SMTP are finally revealed.
Seriously man, FUCK Scientology. They deserve everything that's coming to them.