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“Giganews is an FBI Operation”

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Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#21

Post by bhouston »

themodelplumber wrote: post #18
spindritf wrote: post #4

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.

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.

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.

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#22

Post by VLM »

georgemcbay wrote: post #12
freehunter wrote: post #9

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.

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#23

Post by MeadowTheory »

ithought wrote: post #19
bendoernberg wrote: post #3

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 a…

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 trus…

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.

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#24

Post by sliverstorm »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #5
spindritf wrote: post #4

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…

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

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#25

Post by NathanKP »

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

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#26

Post by freehunter »

themodelplumber wrote: post #18
spindritf wrote: post #4

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.

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.

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#27

Post by mrbill »

bhouston wrote: post #13
mrbill wrote: post #2

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"…

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"?

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#28

Post by [deleted] »

MeadowTheory wrote: post #23
ithought wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 trus…

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.

[deleted]

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#29

Post by jwr »

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.

Re: “Giganews is an FBI Operation”

#30

Post by roywiggins »

ithought wrote: post #19
bendoernberg wrote: post #3

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 a…

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 trus…

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...

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