“Giganews is an FBI Operation” | Hacker News Reader

“Giganews is an FBI Operation”

cryptome.org

150 pointsbhaumik67 comments

Having worked at Texas.Net before it became DataFoundry, and being one of the people who built up the original Sun E450s that were used as the Usenet servers when the separate Giganews product was developed, I find this hilarious.

I know a good number of the GN/DF employees mentioned in the article, and think this sounds more like a disgruntled ex-employee trying to badmouth his former employer.

As for the "gigauth" file - how else are you going to run a subscription Usenet service without logging authenticated users?

Disclaimer: I worked for Texas.Net from 1996 to late 1998 and was one of the people involved in moving their HQ from their San Antonio location to 823 Congress in Austin.

Edit: BTW, here's pics of my tubby self at work in the GREEN TSHIRT THEY MADE ME WEAR! (hey, free clothing is free clothing, I loved not having to worry about what I was going to wear to work every day..)

http://www.mrbill.net/texasnet/

I have nothing but respect for Ron Y. and his family - he and his wife invited me to spend Thanksgiving dinner in '96 with them since I'd just moved to Austin and had nowhere else to go. I will never forget that kindness.

You must be one of them as well then. /wink

Overall, this doesn't seem credible. FBI detectives will not be doing run of the mill OS installs and what not. Also there isn't a need for fake identities just to be a system administrator in a usenet company. This sounds like delusions from a paranoid schizophrenic.

A friend of mine said "I knew it! You're a Mason too, what other secret organizations are you part of that you haven't told us about?"

Yeah, how was this guy going to go back to working at the same company under a fake identity, if everyone there already knew him? "Oh no, I'm not Bob, I'm his twin brother Jim"?

> You must be one of them as well then

mrbill is a freemason working for Halliburton. My tin foil hat is tingling.

http://www.mrbill.net/ink/firsttat/masonictattoo.jpg

That's only your fake human skin atop your true Lizardman exterior.

Now that's a gang sign if I've ever seen one.

Decided I'd try for the full Conspiracy Theory merit badge.

> FBI detectives will not be doing run of the mill OS installs and what not.

Why not? The only cyber security SAs I've met would not consider an OS installation to be run-of-the-mill work. (I guess their heavy education requirements leave little time for computers?)

I'm even more inclined to think that such work is not beneath them if, as implied, there were some kind of secret sauce being added to the recipe.

NB I'm only picking at a subset of your comment; I don't have an opinion about the rest.

I just looked at all of the "leaked" files and realized he dumped the personal contact info of all the employees. NOT COOL. It was bad enough when I had an unlisted phone number in 1996 and got phone calls at 3am from IRC script kiddies.

As for the "gigauth" file - how else are you going to run a subscription Usenet service without logging authenticated users?

Not that I disbelieve the rest of your post, but log minimization is a thing. There is a lot of room for sophistry and misleading statements to be made on the topic of logging. But, I would have assumed that anyone running binary usenet services understands their customers are pirates and would want to hold onto the bare minimum amount of data necessary to allow the service to function.

This is a hoax. These allegations are 100% false.

Unfortunately, since his termination, the poster has periodically posted versions of this information online. Sometimes, he tries to misrepresent himself as our CEO and sometimes he posts as himself. Here are some examples of his previous writings over the last 18 months:

Nuclear Reactors? Our third CEO is Baal? Illuminati? "The Giganews logo is a red colored shield - subtle homage to the legendary Rothschild family"

http://pastebin.com/gM9mN7gS http://ronyokubaitis.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/i-am-ron-yokub...

In addition, we believe he runs a Twitter account (@AngelicPsalms) that accuses random companies, including Giganews, of being controlled by demons and governments:

https://twitter.com/AngelicPsalms/status/510175616352923648

@Golden_Frog @VyprVPN & @Giganews servers are run by FBI Special Agent Scott Kibbey. Do you really want FBI to handle your internet privacy?

https://twitter.com/AngelicPsalms/status/510599892373614592

Angel Yeiazel counters the demon who steals from King's houses, destroys cities & honors, &reveals past&future. Eg:#Credit reports, @Equifax

Hey even, Harley Davidson isn't safe either:

https://twitter.com/AngelicPsalms/status/499732005350031360

Angel Yezalel counters the demon on a pale horse w/trumpeters seen 1st as fierce/after as an innocent girl;Eg:Jeffrey Dahmer,@harleydavidson

We know Cryptome welcomes documents that expose secret governance, but that's not the case here. These allegations are sadly from someone who needs help.

We posted more links and info on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Giganews/status/511587414683291648

Thanks, Giganews

You attack his character, but don't refute his claims. This seems fishy, or you aren't very good at convincing us otherwise.

The first line says "these allegations are 100% false" though

Oh, case closed. Move on everybody!

He's just pointing out that he did refute the claims, where you (in the comment directly above), claim that he refutes the persons character but did not refute the claims.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/refute To refute apparently can mean both /prove/ and just /say/ something is untrue. The way I know the word is in the sense of "proving", not just saying. I dare to say that is the way most people would use that word. Giganews only /says/ the allegations are untrue, it doesn't /prove/ that. To me it means poster is correct in stating their is no refuting of the claims, and I guess it's the same for most readers.

Is there any solid proof that all of the links you shared were actually done by the employee who contacted Cryptome? It seems the pastebin could have been done by anyone, I don't see anything linking these accounts to the individual cited in the Cryptome page.

Edit: Not saying that the Cryptome article is/isn't real, I'm just curious if there's proof of past bad mouthing and mental instability

Not 100% false.

"The Giganews/Data Foundry admins Philip Molter and Mike Smith disciplined me for removing the child porn groups and didn't trust me to keep working there afterwards. They made subtle references to jeopardizing criminal investigations IN PROGRESS then threatened me with a bad reference for removing the child abuse junk. No big deal, a bad reference from them after doing that is good, but Philip restored the cp content from a backup I didn't have access to."

How exactly does this quote go against the statement that this article is false?

That comment was meant for the Giganews account, and wasn't intended to convince anybody else. It happens that I know the part I quoted is true. And I would not be surprised if Nick did contact the FBI. The rest is nonsense, of course.

Giganews has responded by claiming the ex-employee is delusional. They posted links to a pastebin allegedly written by him, which includes the following:

"Besides spamming, the only other conduct that is unacceptable is uploading or contacting our employees with information about Vehuiah the holy angel, her invocation Psalm 3:3, Archangels, or the angels of Jehovah's 72 syllable name called the Shemhamforash. These are all unstoppable solutions to the 72 demon intelligences central to mankind, and will drive the dark of all evil away with an annoyingly bright Holy Light."

https://twitter.com/Giganews/status/511587414683291648

http://pastebin.com/gM9mN7gS

But it reads like a satirical manifesto. He certainly appears to be trying to be funny and wrote it as the Co-CEO. Ending with:

>Now that you know what we're about, start a free 14-day trial at Giganews.com and join the King of Thieves in the unholy war against God. We can only win with your help, and we need your soul to fuel Hells flames. Our servers are alwayson, always available, and run by a company you can trust. Giganews: Newsgroups Nonstop.

Yeah. I am not a medical professional, but I have spent a lot of time around schizophrenics and other folks with paranoid delusions, and this does not have the same highly disorganized and repetitive character that their speech and writing tend towards.

EDIT: To be clear, I still don't really believe the story, but if he is suffering from paranoid delusions, he is VERY high-functioning.

This[0] twitter account GigaNews links to makes mention of "FBI agent Scott Kibbey" and has been tweeting stuff like this for months:

Angel Vehuel counters the demon appearing as an angel that teaches geometry, speaks of hidden things,& causes anger. Eg:@Windows &@BillGates

See our tweets to know why the counterfeit food, the so-called #MightyWings from @McDonalds are dedicated to a winged bull demon of Hell. https://twitter.com/AngelicPsalms/status/438490809164263425

[0] https://twitter.com/AngelicPsalms/status/509857806057762816

Which seems pretty off the rails. Poe's Law and all that, but still...

I was employee #3 at Texas.net (Datafoundry's predecessor) back in 1995. While Jonah Yokubaitis (Ron's son and texas.net co-founder) was a bit of a hot head and we had a few quarrels back when we were both young and dumb, the Yokubaitis family are good people. Ron Yokubaitis, in particular, is a good person. I knew him as a staunch Libertarian. In fact, he was the first Libertarian I ever met and what he told me about the party later influenced my own political views. While I have no evidence or knowledge to support or disprove this man's claim, I don't believe for a second that this is true. DataFoundry/Texas.net was quite the cowboy operation--literally and figuratively--and they employed some colorful and hot-tempered characters over the years, including my younger self. This Nick Caputo character sounds like sour grapes to me.

Hey, Chris. :) People are going to say the ex-Texas.Net Mafia is showing up now...

Howdy, Bill. :) Good to see you around here. I'm interested to see if anybody else shows up. It's hard to believe that this was almost 20 years ago. I wonder what happened to everybody. Ed, Mo, Mikedoug, etc.

As far as I know, Ed is now/still the CIO at DataFoundry. I'm in contact with Brett H. on FB and we're laughing about this. Mikedoug moved on a few years ago but I'm not sure what he's doing now. Mark is a barista somewhere in Texas, according to FB.

I've lost touch with pretty much everyone else...

When I left late last year, Mikedoug was still at DF.

Clearly, there is a cabal at work here...

In addition, Kibbey offered me a new name and identity, with a new drivers license and everything, if I were to go back to work at Giganews.

What? Why? The whole story seems disjointed.

Yeah, that's where my BS detector started beeping. How would a new identity help if he were going to be working with the same people face-to-face?

This line is also phrased very oddly: I've linked pictures of my Giganews badge and the shirts with their red armor logo I was forced to wear when working there.

Forced? So, it was a uniform? I've worked at a department store, and I wouldn't use the phrase "forced" because they required me to wear a name badge.

If you try hard enough, you can find a dystopian police state anywhere you want.

Well, and this:

> It was then that I realized that the fed I was talking to had been my coworker at Giganews since I started in 2009!

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure I would instantly recognize any coworker I'd known for three years.

The word coworker can mean a lot of things. I worked at a company of 14,000 and while technically they would all be my coworkers, I probably would struggle to recognize more than 100 of them that I sat in the same room as every day. I've met more than a few "coworkers" from that company who drove a semi in Florida for the company while I worked five states away in an office.

Even at my current company with ~100 employees, damn if I could recognize the accountants just by seeing their face out of context.

A lot of this story suggests that a diagnosis of delusional paranoid schizophrenic seems plausible. They are also have issues with reasoning abilities, thus the disjointedness.

That made no sense to me when I read it.

It would be a great bit on SNL though:

Coworker: "Hey Nick, when did you color your hair. . .and. . get glasses?"

Nick: "You must have me mistaken with some other employee, I'm not Nick Caputo, here, look at my ID."

Coworker: "Nick, dude, I know its you, you're the only guy I know who has a Zelda tattoo on their wrist."

Nick: "Like I said, you have me confused with someone else" hurries away in opposite direction

I was actually starting to believe this story, then he hit me with that little diddy and it was all downhill from there.

Yea seriously, If everyone at Giganews is in on it why the hell did he need a new identity?

As a thought experiment, let's assume at least parts of this story are true.

I would actually be very happy if the FBI was plugged into a USENET feed, sifting through the crud and fighting crime. This isn't like the NSA privacy incursions — USENET is public. Whatever you post is out there for everyone to see.

Yes, I agree - the only potential concern here is just that they can grab this connection data without probable cause and could easily decide to go after... most of the customers for piracy which could not otherwise be caught.

Hah! They'd have to hire a thousand more judges and prosecutors to handle that caseload!

My biggest surprise is that Usenet is apparently still that big of a thing. I guess I've been out of the loop, the last time I heard about Usenet was 10 years ago, with people talking about pirating from Usenet because torrents were being blocked. I don't think I've used Usenet since I had dial-up.

Usenet was basically the last bastion of relatively open to the public (but hidden by being obscure) piracy, but over the last couple of years even Usenet has been largely neutered by automatic DMCA requests, at least as it pertains to US-based providers.

"has been largely neutered by automatic DMCA requests"

For top 40 pop music and hollywood movies released within maybe 6 months of todays date.

For the rest of the cultural universe, no not really.

Also, HBO TV series, which is all.. er "my friend"... cares about, since HBO refuses to offer "my friend" any way to pay for their content that doesn't involve getting a full-blown oligopoly-supporting cable TV subscription (while also not putting much of their content on alt services like Amazon Prime streaming for months to a year after initial air date).

Just posted a link about Verizon breaking the cable monopoly:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8322762

Usenet isn't just piracy. There are still a number of active plain-text discussion groups (though most of them aren't as active as they used to be).

It was actually surprisingly popular while I was going to college and I graduated this year. Most people used it with Sickbeard to automatically download TV shows, but some people thought our university was using deep packet inspection and encrypted Usenet was more secure than torrenting.

I worked with nickc before he was terminated (I am no longer an employee of PHMGMT, DF, or GN. I left but Imn sure the company doesnt have a very high opinion of myself), and I can attest that he is one weird dude. When I first started working there it was suggested to get Nick to start talking about all of his conspiracy theories in order to pass the time at night... I did not get the chance (nor did I have the desire). I am absolutely not surprised by this.

Weird. 137 points, posted 2 hours ago... and already it's moved off the front page on HN.

Again, what's up, admins?

This and the Kim Dotcom / Snowden / NZ spying story both appear to have been hastily removed from the front page.

In fact, the NZ story (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8317617) appears to have been hidden entirely.

It's getting flagged, probably because it's of dubious veracity and the author doxxed GN employees.

Does it really matter what he says? Giganews might keeps logfile "gigauth". I might not.

But still people have not understand at what scale the internet is broken. It does not matter weather they log. The NSA logs anyway.

Even if it's not a CIA op, the NSA will know everything as well, just as if it was a CIA op. Payments, traffic, everything.

This claims that VyprVPN is logging things for the government and other actors. I use VyprVPN on a regular basis, so I'm curious about what exactly they are logging, how long they keep the logs, etc.

I don't use the VPN for anything illegal, mostly just to get around Verizon's stupid bandwidth limiting on Netflix, Amazon S3, and other services, and for an extra layer of protection when connecting from a sketchy public wifi, etc. But I still would like some answers about these claims especially since their privacy policy says:

Each time a user connects to VyprVPN, we retain the following data for 30 days: the user's source IP address, the VyprVPN IP address used by the user, connection start and stop time and total number of bytes used.

and they say:

Does not log a user's traffic or the content of any communications

http://www.giganews.com/blog/2014/09/it-is-a-gigahoax-gigane...

It's a Gigahoax - Giganews is NOT an FBI Operation

Giganews has always supported the Open Internet and fought for the personal freedoms that the Open Internet enables. Unfortunately, one of those freedoms is the ability for anyone to say almost anything they want, whether or not it is true or factual, and for others to believe it. Yesterday, Giganews was accused of being an FBI operation by an ex-employee through the well-known Cryptome.org. This accusation is completely false, and the accuser offers no evidence to support the claim.

Cryptome's failure to contact us to validate the allegations or respond to our concerns has lessened their credibility. It does not seem that Cryptome is in search for the truth, which leaves us to question what are their true motives. Sorry, Cryptome - Giganews is NOT an FBI operation. You've been duped.

Giganews is in the impossible position of proving a negative. If we say our list of employees does not include any FBI employees, then they must be "using false identities." If we say the named FBI operatives don't look like any of our employee photos, "the pictures must have been altered." Even the denial itself is used as further evidence of the truth of the accusation. In a court of law, such an accusation would never stand up to scrutiny, but on the Open Internet, opinions can be formed by only a few words on a popular website. Fighting the lies only emboldens those who tell them – Feeding the Troll.

What we can do is stand on our long history of supporting the Open Internet and the privacy of our customers:

- We are one of the few providers left still offering access to a full Usenet news feed - We led the way in introducing encrypted SSL connections for Usenet access - We worked with Golden Frog to provide the easy-to-use VyprVPN Personal VPN service with our Usenet accounts - Giganews customers were the first to get access to Golden Frog's Dump Truck secure storage service - Giganews and Golden Frog brought together those that fight for online privacy at our SXSW Take Back Your Internet Panel. - Giganews spoke, just today, before the Texas State Legislature in support of proposed Texas privacy legislation.

Actions speak louder than words, and these are the actions of a company that supports customer privacy and a free and open Internet. Giganews has not and will not be controlled by any government organization, and we will continue to provide the best Usenet service to our customers.

i stopped believing when he claimed the police detective also had a full time job as an undercover sysadmin. lol.

The speed of giganews' response + allegations of mental illness for their attacker is pretty impressive.

Poor Usenet. It was so beautiful, once.

"The Net interprets censorship as damage."

... but it apparently interprets passive, silent auditing as a feature. ;)

Yeah, but the last time it really was was circa 1998.

Eh with the automated copyright takedowns usenet is useless now anyways, everyone has moved on.

Still works pretty well for me

you just need to get the right nzb site to help filter nzbs .. http://usenetreviewz.com/nzb-sites/

The Special Agent e-mail exist and headers looks strong ! This looks legit !

Well, he says the cp groups were restored. That should be verifiable, no?

Heh, I'll let you go and check for us.

Unless something is verifiably true/false it should not be voted to the top. The conversation is the only valuable thing to the Hackernews community.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com