AN EXPERIMENTAL PROPOSAL FOR ANONYMOUS POSTING AND VOTING TO ALT.RELIGION.SCIENTOLOGY VIA ANON.PENET.FI First Draft Comments to: Homer Wilson Smith homer@rahul.net Since the shut down of anon.penet.fi because of anonymous abuses of the server the availablility of anonymity to various groups has been severely limited. In my personal opinion this threatens to cause a significant lowering of the quality of some groups, including but not limited to alt.religion.scientology. This is not because anonymous posting has been forbidden in such groups but only that such posting has stopped because of the difficulties of getting the anon servers to service the group. There is a strong debate in news.admin.policy on the subject of how to determine if a group should be reenabled for anonymous service through any given anonymous server. There may still be anonymous servers that are willing to serve all groups indiscriminately, and of course anyone with the know how and courage can post via the usual outlaw methods, however I wish to establish the validity, quality and respectability of anonymous posting as a general way of doing business, so I have chosen anon.penet.fi as the target for this proposal and experiment. Due to the publicity surrounding anon.penet.fi, and the seriousness of its operator Johan Helsingius (Julf, admin@anon.penet.fi) it will probably become the standard setting leader in its field along with those others partaking in the anonymous enterprise. Therefore I have chosen it as probably the most suited for a highly visible and perhaps controversial experiment in anonymous posting and voting in a group that is certainly as hot and as controversial as they come. Alt.religion.scientology has long suffered from the fear and trepidation of those who have felt they were not safe to speak, having left the Church often on bad terms with a large, financially rich, litigatious, and powerful religious organization who some seem to perceive rightly or wrongly as willing to do anything to accomplish its ends at the expense of freedoms of speech and religion on a world wide basis. The Church and its members in good standing feel they have been sorely wronged by those who have left the Church either to leave Scientology behind entirely, or to join the Independent Scientology field, the self styled Free Zoners or Independent Scientology Movement. Those who have left the Church claim they have been tracked and harassed to the point of non survival by those in the Church whom they claim are only interested in financial gain and the squelching of any competition in the spiritual auditing field. (Auditing is a Scientology term referring to their technology to free the spirit from self imposed limitations born of pain and suffering.) Those in the Church claim the independents have stolen or have engaged in criminal conspiracies to steal from the Church the very materials they are using in the field to audit their parishioners; materials which the Church claims are its copyrighted intellectual property and trademarked spiritual secrets necessary for its own financial health and survival. Those in the field claim the Church has tried to copyright spiritual knowledge that is Eternally True and applies to all of us and thus by default belongs to the public domain no matter who first discovered it. In other words 'if the cure for cancer belongs to all mankind, then so does the cure for insanity'. There are definitely two sides to this story, the hostility and rancor between the warring parties is extraordinarily and in my opinion dangerously strong, and neither side seems willing to speak freely to the other due to fear of repercussions. Of course there are exceptions. Even those in the Church are limited by the Church in what they can say in defense of the Church. They have very strict non disclosure agreements amongst themselves, which some say are necessary for the health and well being of their parishioners. Other's claim it is solely for financial gain, and to hide the underdealings of their agents trying to make a safe space for Scientology in a world hostile to it. Those out of the Church claim they are limited in what they can relate of their experiences and auditing technology, a technology they claim to be more precious than fire itself, by what they claim to be a continuous threat to their lives and livelihood by the well financed legal forces of the Church, and worse by the alleged unlawful and underhanded attacks on their personal freedoms by members of the Church's alleged dirty tricks department. Given this broiling cauldron, it seems reasonable that an experiment in socially conducted anonymity should take place. Outlaw anonymity has always been available, and has indeed been used to some effect on alt.religion.scientology, but it usually engendered great hostility from some of the members, both for and against Scientology, and lead to tracing efforts and the annoyance of sysadmins who were requested to intervene. Although some of the tracing efforts failed, a few of the anonymous posters folded up anyway and apparently have stopped posting which in my opinion was a loss to the group. Scientology itself claims that communication is the universal solvent for all things bad. It is in this context that I make the following proposal. One problem with voting for anonymity in a group is finding a way to allow anonymous VOTES in the voting. Perhaps it is illogical to allow anonymous votes in a group that has not yet voted to allow anonymity, but it is clear that if a vocal presence in a group is in and of it self a clear and present danger, then those who are most in need of anonymity would also be the most in need of anonymous voting FOR anonymity. However the anonymous severs in question will not enable anonymous posting of any kind without a majority vote for anonymity. This presents a classic Catch-22 problem. Another problem with the way things are set up, is that groups are either moderated or unmoderated. There is strong fear that unmoderated anonymous postings would bring chaos, leagl and otherwise to a group, yet no one wants to moderate the unanonymous postings. To date there has been no way to moderate the anonymous postings alone. This proposal is an effort solve both of these problems, so please give it careful consideration. THE PROPOSAL 1.) I have established for myself an anonymous id with anon.penet.fi. That id is AN19187 and corresponds to my real account homer@rahul.net Any anonymous mail sent to AN19187@anon.penet.fi will be received by me with your own anonymous id attached to it. That means I will not know who sent me that mail. PLEASE READ THE INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO POST ANONYMOUSLY BELOW. If you wish to vote anonymously for or against anonymity in alt.religion.scientology you may send your vote anonymously to me at that address. I will collect them and periodically post them to the group as a single file under my own name. As there has been no consensus yet as to whether anonymous votes should be ALLOWED in a vote for anonymity, it is not clear whether your votes will be counted in the end. But at least they will be collected and presented to the group, the anon server admin and the people on news.admin.policy. 2.) Since I am setting myself up as a human remailer for anonymous postings to alt.religion.scientology, I could if motivated act as a moderator of anonymous postings to a.r.s. once anonymous posting has been voted in. I have little intention of doing this, but others could put themselves in that position if they so desired. The advantage of this is clear. The group may not want to be moderated as a whole, but they also may not want to give anonymous posts a free reign should the group give the go ahead for anonymous postings based on the vote. This setup at least allows for the option of having an unmoderated group with a moderated anonymous ability. 3.) It is also quite clear that as a moderator of anonymous posts, not only can the moderator reject dangerous and illegal postings, but he can also strip out the anonymous headers of the postings altogether. This would allow absolute anonymity with absolute security as long as the moderator does not keep the original postings and the headers he stripped off. This is mentioned only as an option for a group that has matured into its anonymous posting history. HOW TO POST ANONYMOUSLY. 1.) Send a mail file to password@anon.penet.fi whose first line after the first blank line after the header is a password of your choice. You will receive back the entire help file, plus your own anonymous id. 2.) To send an anonymous mail file to me, send your vote or hate mail to, an19187@anon.penet.fi There must be a line in your mail header BEFORE the first blank line after the header that reads, X-Anon-Password: your password here. Play with sending anonymous mail to yourself first to get the hang of the thing. 3.) Be very careful to get my anon id right or your mail will go to the King of Zimbabwe or some such place. Don't expect responses from me, I have a real life to live, or what may be left of it after numerous people get through with me for doing this. ALL mail received by me concerning these matters may and probably will be reposted to the a.r.s. list without permission, so don't send me anything you don't want the list to see. This offer of my time and services is for a.r.s. ONLY, don't even think of asking me to do it for another group. Don't ask me to strip anon id's from your posts. Don't yet send me actual anonymous posts that are not VOTES to accept anonymous posts on a.r.s. 4.) If you are member of the Church of Scientology in good standing, 'The Religious Technology Center has the purpose to safeguard the proper use of trademarks, to protect the public and to make sure that the powerful technology of Dianetics and Scientology remains in good hands and is properly used.' 'Help Keep Scientology Working' Knowledge Reports are an essential part of Keeping Scientology Working. If you encounter any non-optimum situation or off-policy occurring in your org, mission or area, write a Knowledge Report to your local Ethics Officer and send a copy to the Reports Officer RTC if you feel the RTC should be informed of the matter. Reports should be sent to: RELIGIOUS TECHNOLOGY CENTER, Reports Officer, 1710 Ivar Avenue, Suite 1100 Los Angeles, CA 90028 USA Homer