The story so far!
In short: Matt Giwer ([email protected]) had been told multiple
times not to send Rich Green ([email protected]) private email, but
did so anyway. That email was bounced by a procmail script which said,
correctly, that it was _private_email_ that was being returned, and
added: “I am _not_ sending a copy to [email protected]” (emphasis added).
Mr. Giwer’s response was to assume, wrongly, that this was a response to
a _public_post_.
(Apparently, Mr. Giwer screwed up and both posted and emailed his
article, without meaning to. It happens. The sensible thing to do
would be to realize it, admit it, apologize, and try not to do it again.
Mr. Giwer is not, however, sensible!)
Mr. Giwer immediately concluded that it _had_ to be an _automated_
script that would respond to _all_ his public posts. Since he has been
posting 80-90 times a day on average, he was probably quite worried
about being self-mailbombed by this supposed script! So he fired off a
note to Rich Green, and he _did_ sent a copy to Mr. Green’s root, just
because that’s the kind of guy he is.
However, since [email protected] happens to be Rich Green himself,
Mr. Green’s procmail script again bounced that copy back to Mr. Giwer.
One would think it would tip off Mr. Giwer that he got the same response
from [email protected] that he (supposedly) got from a script
which (supposedly) searched through Usenet for his articles. One would
think — but this is not what happened. Instead, he chose to email
[email protected], hoping he’d have better luck there. (He did not,
as we’ll see.)
Later he threatened Stanford, saying they’re a “legitimate target,” and
started appending his erroneous side of the story to other, totally
unrelated, articles.
His mistake has been explained to him but he doesn’t believe it. He
still continues to insist that Mr. Green is running an automated
Usenet-scanning script of some kind, even after Mr. Green publicly
posted the procmail file that handles his email! Therefore, this cannot
be classified as a simple misunderstanding — this is a lie.
Contacting someone else’s sysadmin and lying about them supposedly
abusing the net is itself an abuse of the net.
Threatening to make that person’s computer system (in this case, the
entire computer network of Stanford University!) “a target” is abuse of
the net.
Therefore, this information is filed both under giwer.matt/lies and
giwer.matt/net-abuse:
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/lies
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse
Here is the documentation:
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.001
Matt Giwer makes the accusation described above.
And, as he says, “That makes Stanford University the same piece of
harrassing shit that is Greenie is.”
And “of course copies are being sent to [Mr. Green’s system’s] root.”
Mr. Giwer quotes Rich Green’s procmail email with ID
<199606220857.BA[email protected]>, responding to Matt Giwer’s
_email_ (note, email and not a post) with ID
<[email protected]>.
Note that, by the message-IDs, Mr. Giwer’s email was sent at 8:57 AM,
and Mr. Green’s procmail bounced it also at 8:57 AM.
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.002
Giwer repeats himself, adding, “his university is operating an automated
harrassment script” and then the enigmatic phrase: “If this continues
Stanford is a legitimate target.” Target for what?
He says: “The greenie game is to pretend my public posts are in fact
private email and then complain about it.” Sorry, Mr. Giwer, but
there’s no pretending about it.
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.003
Rich Graves, of Stanford University, points out that (1) it’s highly
unlikely that a Usenet article would have gotten from Netcom to Stanford
in five minutes; and (2) from the In-Reply-To field quoted in Rich
Green’s email (and subsequently quoted by Mr. Giwer), it is obvious that
what was responded to was not a Giwer _article_, but Giwer _email_.
Mr. Graves suggests that Mr. Giwer might try claiming that the
In-Reply-To field is a forged invention, and that if so, the matter can
be resolved by asking Netcom to confirm it. Mr. Giwer doesn’t even pick
up on this idea; instead, as we shall see, he continues to claim that
the email did not really exists, but offers no proof or explanation.
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.004
Rich Green confirms Rich Graves’ guess. The sysadmin who had received
Mr. Giwer’s cc to [email protected] had contacted Mr. Green, who replied.
In this posting, he quotes the email he wrote to that sysadmin. As he
says: “Mr. Giwer is apparently not able to remember whether he
responded in e-mail or via posting news.”
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.005
Another Giwer post claiming the same as lie-stanford.001. Mr. Giwer
quotes Rich Green’s procmail email with ID
<199606220911.CA[email protected]>, responding to Matt Giwer’s
_email_ (note, email and not a post) with ID
<[email protected]>.
Note that, by the message-IDs, Mr. Giwer’s email was sent at 9:10 AM,
and Mr. Green’s procmail bounced it at 9:11 AM.
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.006
Another Giwer post claiming the same. Mr. Giwer quotes Rich Green’s
procmail email with ID <[email protected]>,
responding to Matt Giwer’s _email_ (note, email and not a post) with ID
<[email protected]>.
Note that, by the message-IDs, Mr. Giwer’s email was sent at 9:56 AM,
and Mr. Green’s procmail bounced it also at 9:56 AM.
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.007
Mr. Giwer confirms precisely what it is he is claiming (which, as we
have already seen, is wrong): “I am not talking about mail. I am
talking about newsgroup posts. That is what the bot is dealing with.
It is taking NG posts and turning them into email to me.”
http://www.almanac.bc.ca/cgi-bin/ftp.pl?people/g/giwer.matt/net-abuse/green.rich/lie-stanford.008
Mr. Giwer responds to a post from Hilary Ostrov by (again) calling her a
“fat broad” and appending his totally irrelevant article about Mr. Green.
