Stopping Abuse Against Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen by Illuminating the Attacks on Techrights
You're almost guaranteed to get your hands burned for messing with the law against legally-savvy veterans and widely-regarded people
THE holidays are pretty much here already (or imminent) and the Monday series will slow down a bit. It'll pick up pace again later on, maybe before January.
Today we want to take stock of things (not stockings) and mention some of our findings. One reader said to us: "I found some more defamation blogs written by the [militant]."
We've archived many of these and will present a glimpse of them next year. There's a long history of abuse, going back to (at least) 2010.
Oh, we've archived those too, so don't bother blackmailing Michael Larabel of Phoronix into deleting these pages. Don't lie to the webhost of Phoronix either. Certainly don't file reports using sockpuppet accounts; that would be an actual crime [1, 2].
The more that's being done trying to suppress (or censor) this series, the longer the series will get. Those attempts just give us more (and newer) material to cover. And here's a hint: attacking women (like my wife and my mother) is always a losing strategy.
Our reader explained the modus operandi of the principal militant, not the puppetmaster. To use a metaphor, think of drug "mules" and "imams" (radicalisers), respectively. "It sets up sockpuppet accounts and spams the defamation blogs through Hacker News," our reader explained. I too was a target, along with my wife. Never expect sane behaviour from such militants; they even target your parents if they cannot get under your skin.
"Sapphirus says contact the OPP in Canada about this [militant]," the reader told us. "That's not a city police issue."
What if the militant is autistic, just like many people who are incited by imams to commit acts of terror? "Tell them about the harassment and false reports," the reader added.
What we've basically wasted a lot of time on (for over a year already) is a militant force working online via Tor and/or VPNs.
Another person said that "what [the puppetmaster] and [the above militant] just pulled was a DoS attack through social engineering..."
As we noted before (presenting hard evidence), DoS is the correct legal distinction and that's also a correct analogy because they're manipulating people into thinking that they, the aggressors, are somehow victims.
I spent many hours speaking to cops about this issue, even high-level police investigators. They don't take the matter lightly and the cases are still open. Earlier this winter I spoke to cops for about 40 minutes and they understand the severity better as they learn more and more things. All in all, I probably spent about 4 hours on the phone with the police and they will speed up prosecution/enforcement if (or when) the abuse persists. As one person explained to us, "DoS is an acknowledged crime these days, whether executed via the usual compromised Windows boxes or via social engineering."
As a reminder, a false report is a crime, but when filed from another country it's harder to enforce/impose the punishment. That too is a factor, and so is perjury, and we suppose conspiracy to commit crime too.
Our webhost has only been convinced that the people who try to deplatform the site are lunatics and vandals. There's no legal basis/merit and use (or abuse/misuse) of sockpuppets does not help their vandalism. Some time later this year or next year we'll also show the accusations are manifestly false, appealing to emotion rather than actual facts.
Those involved are far from impressed; they've escalated this already to top management and "it is important that they understand that the reports are part of an ongoing harassment campaign," as one party put it, "part of a series of crimes under current investigation."
We very eagerly look forward to next year. We'll tell the full story and present all the official documentation. Whether someone will get arrested or not isn't the most important thing. We just want to set the record straight with facts, evidence, and legal analysis. As a reminder, the same people who do this to us also do this to Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen, the people who made GNU and the GPL when Linus Torvalds was still an adolescent. It's important to stop the abuse; stopping the abusers is the key. █