I had the odd experience of a quasi court hearing over
speaker phone today at 11:00EDT. As I mentioned I have
had some ongoing trouble from a "disturbed" person in
the form of a gazillion Emails. It climaxed Thursday
when the mail server for the place I worked crashed under
a email flood attack. I ended up in the directors office
trying to explain this event.

After that I talked to an lawyer and decided to just bail
from this and other groups and where posssible I removed my
posts. Good and well except Friday night my Hotmail and Yahoo
mail accounts where chocked.

In desperation I asked some IT gurus for help. With the help
of another friend, a shrink, I posted a series of bait, in the
form of vitrolic posts designed to make this person freak out.

It worked and at 7:00 I got a phone call from this person's
father. When I explained what had happened he told me his son
was on probation for simialr cyber attacks and as part of
probation he was banned from accessing any computer. He had
returned home after asuring his parents he had changed his ways.

I got a call about an hour later from the DA in the state where
the person had been tried and placed on prabation. I aggreed to
an 11:00 conference call to see if a "disposition" could be agreed
upon. The attacker admited that he had stalked, harased and
flooded my work account. That he had hijacked many PCs and had
penetrated my works "childish" security. I wasn't the only person
on his hit list. About 2 dozen people were lucky enough to get his
un-loving attention to detail.

He had been released on shock probation, from a 20 year sentence.
He was given the choice of finishing the final 19 /12 yers, or facing
a new trial in addition to a probation hearing. His lawyer tried
to argue this person needed psych help, but when faced with an either
or option, the lawer agreed that it was in "everyone's best interest"
for his client to "return to a supervised environment." LEOs will be
contacting the other lucky people in the comming days. This person
could still face legal action from his other actions.

When I asked him why he hated my comments on antennas he went off on
my "lofty" and "arogant attitude". He ranted for 5 minutes with exact
quotes from the post that "triggered" him. I was stunned. And alarmed.
If I managd to set him off with a pretty innocent post about a good
antenna design, what are my posts in misc.survivalism likely to prompt?

The cop friend I had with me told me after it was all over, that this
person would amost certainly not last 6 months in prison. At this point

I am at a loss. My shrink friend and IT friends all tell me that this
is
like getting hit by a metorite. A once in a lifetime event. So I don't
know if I am going to continue to post or not. I have enjoyed, mostly,
the banter in this and the other NGs. But once burned forever shy.
I am wrestling with the question of "is it really worthwhile?"

Lets not start a flame thread over this, it isn't worthy of the wasted
bandwidth. I felt an obligation to let this group, and those who read
this group and are active in the other groups know what happened and
the result.
Disturbed people are much more common then I realized. They are all too

common. When I think what this person could have, planed to do but
never
got around to, do to me by attacking my credit history etc, it is down
right scary. I really lucked out and didn't get fired. In the end it
comes down
to a cost benifit question.

Is the net worth the risk?

Sorry this took so many words, I left out a lot of detail. But couldn;t
really cut out any more detail without lossing the thread.
I don't know and won't for a week or two, or longer.

Take care and be sure to take steps to protect your selves
like geting the credit agencies to notify you of ANY activity.

Robert, RFH, Tom, and the rest, sorry for pulling my posts from your
groups, but my lawyer says it is "prudent". He wishes I could cancel
everything I have every posted. When you think how easy it is to find
every post anyone has made it is a little frightening. Anyway I have
a new antenna to test.

And for the time being I will be lurking in the background.

73
Terry