Every year I give a guest lecture in a class here on Information Warfare. My lecture covers Scientology's ongoing war against the Internet: the RTC v. NETCOM lawsuit, the attack on the Penet anonymous remailer, the raid against XS4ALL, sporgery attacks against newsgroups, spamming of search engines, installing web filters on cult members' computers, bogus trademark infringement claims against domain name owners, and so on.

The first time I gave this lecture, I announced on ARS my intention to use Keith Henson's letter to Judge Whyte (containing the entirety of NOTs 34) in my presentation to the class. This elicited a threat letter from Helena Kobrin's winged monkey, one Ava M. Paquette, Esq., accusing me of copyright violations. (Like all CoS attorneys, she acts like she's never heard of "fair use".) Unfortunately, although I had made the announcement a full two weeks in advance, Ms. Paquette's letter didn't arrive until AFTER the date of my lecture.

No worry. I thanked Ms. Paquette for her letter and promised to use it as a class handout next time. Which I did. That was last year.

This year's lecture is scheduled for next week. March 5, to be precise. Who knows what hideous copyright violations might take place in that classroom? I'd be worried about trade secret violations too, except I don't think Scientology has any trade secrets left. After all, the Vorlon NOTs pack and OT III are *still* on the web for everyone to read, after all this time. How embarassing.

As you can see, information warfare needn't be one sided. New in this year's lecture will be a look at Narconon-Exposed.net. I predict that web site will cause the cult way more trouble than the exposure of its "spiritual trade secrets". This will be interesting to watch.

-- Dave Touretzky, fearless NOTs Scholar extraordinaire

Yeah, baby! The Narconon Exposed site is a primo example of information warfare! Nevada was just the first salvo, and a sweet victory it was!

I've been sending that URL out along with the cult's own PR site URL, with a brief paragraph on how to compare them. I've had nothing but good responses back. Short of getting Narconon Exposed shut down, the cult is pretty toothless in the face of such well-documented material. It's like the Time Magazine article...all they could do was sue, as their defence could not stand up to solid information. The only way they can prevail is by finding a country full of illiterate, offline people to take advantage of. Gullible, illiterate, offline people. The kind you see on the Jerry Springer show, who only leave their natural trailer park habitat because the show pays their way to Chicago for a day! Wheee!

barb

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