Thoughts of an Internet terrorist trying to move on

Another day another disappointment. Now I am an "Internet Terrorist".

http://glasscityjungle.com/wordpress/?p=3215#comment-290914

http://glasscityjungle.com/wordpress/?p=3215#comment-290859

Dear Mr. Myers,

Please be advised that I represent the Lucas County Republican Party with respect to protection of their intellectual property and internet website. According to Bob Reichert, you are the individual responsible for the Party's website and domain name and others.

You have possession of the party's passwords and account information for Godaddy, Domains by Proxy, and the web hosting company used for the website. Clearly you are the individual who has taken down the Party's website.

I will not bore you with a long recitation of the state and federal criminal and civil laws you have violated. Suffice it to say that exceeding the scope of your authorization in accessing computers connected to the internet is both a federal and Ohio crime. It may further violate Michigan criminal and civil laws since you may have accesed the internet to commit your unlawful acts thee. I suggest you to immediately seek legal counsel which will hopefully prevent further criminal activity on your part. In case you have any doubt you do not have authorization to use the party's domain name, web hosting account or interfere with their website. Your actions with respect to the domain name and website may constitute violations of Copyright law, Unfair Competition law, the AntiCybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA), trespass to chattels, and conversion.

In the event the LCRP is forced to file a lawsuit against you it will seek statutory damages under the ACPA of $100,000.00 per domain name, actual damages, punitive damages for your malice, and the award of attorneys fees and costs. You along with any civil co-conspirators will be responsible for this judgment. I further believe there is good basis to have you and any co-conspirators removed from the central committee for your these acts of internet terrorism leveled against the Republican party.

You are to immediately cease and desist your unlawful activities and give me written assurances that you will:
1. Provide Mr. Stainbrook all contact information and passwords for Godaddy, Domains by Proxy, and the web hosting company used for the website.

2. Provide all source code and graphics used for the website.

3. Provide in writing your assurances that you will no longer interfere with any LCRP property.

4. Take any and all necessary steps to change the registrant from Domains by Proxy back to the Lucas County Republican Party.

In the event you choose not to comply the LCRP will initiate suit against you.

While I presume you will seek competent counsel, it is my duty to inform you of the legal obligations of parties with respect to the care and preservation of evidence. I believe it is appropriate to set forth those duties in this letter so that there are no misunderstandings in the future.

In particular you should not erase any files or data residing on your computers or other recording devices without making backups of them and maintaining them. This means you cannot delete any files on your Blog site. If any hard drives or replaced you must save the old hard drives. Such evidence may include but is not limited to email correspondence, deleted files, memos, reports financial or billing information. Improper actions will be considered spoliation of evidence. It is also important that you be aware that in the event of litigation we may seek forensic analysis of all relevant hard drives. This would include any hard drives or computers used by you at home, your job, or elsewhere. This analysis will allow us to determine if any files have been erased, when they were erased and even if a hard drive has been replaced in any particular computers. Current state of the art analysis would thus allow us to detect any improper actions taken.

You should also specifically understand the following:

Parties to litigation have a duty to preserve evidence beginning at the time when a party knows or reasonably should know that the evidence may be relevant to pending or anticipated litigation. St. V's was certainly aware of this on the date of this incident. Mathias v. Jacobs, 197 F.R.D.29 (S.D.N.Y. 2000); Melendez v. Illinois Bell Telephone, 79 F.3d 661 (7th Cir. 1996). The duty to preserve data relevant to anticipated or existing litigation extends to data resident on computer hard drives and other electronically recorded data. Kleiner v Burns, WL 1909470 (D Kan., Dec. 15, 2000); Danis v. USN Communications, WL 1694325 (N.D.Ill. Oct. 23, 2000). Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing Co ("3M") v Pribl, 259 F.3d 587 (Wis. 2001), 2001 WL 832749 (July 25, 2001).

Computer data is volatile and is destroyed by the mere operation of the computer's operating system. Antioch v. Scrapbook, 210 F.R.D. 645, 2002 U.S.Dist.LEXIS 20811 (D.Ct. Minn., April 29, 2002). Log files are changed whenever a system is started. The start process (bootup) changes the dates and information kept in thousands of files. Housekeeping programs that format disks (Defrag), purge files after a time period, recycle back-up tapes or media must be identified and stopped as soon as possible. The obligation to preserve documents rests with senior corporate officials, who must contact information technology personnel and insure that the company's document retention programs are modified so as not to destroy relevant data. Danis v. USN Communications, Inc. 2000 WL 1694325 (N.D.Ill. October 23, 2000). Companies cannot use a corporate retention policy to "shield" their destruction of evidence, even where the destruction occurred before litigation was initiated. Rambus v. Infineon, 220 F.R.D. 264, 2004 U.S.Dist.LEXIS 4577 (E.D.Va. March 17, 2004).

Where data destruction occurs after a complaint is filed and is deliberate, sanctions can be imposed. William T. Thompson Co. v. General Nutrition Corp., 593 F. Supp. 1443 C.D. Cal. 1984). "GNC was on notice from the inception of litigation that the [erased] records.were relevant to the litigation or at least were reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence.GNC's senior management knew or should have known at the inception of this litigation that the records.were relevant to the matters in issue.and likely to be requested by Thompson during the litigation. The court struck GNC's answer, entered default judgment against it, and dismissed its complaint in a related case. The Court specifically rejected lesser sanctions. See also RKI, Inc. v. Grimes, 177 F.Supp.2d 859 (N.D. Ill. 2001) (Court determined that Defendant defragmented his home computer attempting to hide from plaintiff that defendant had deleted confidential information and software. The court sanctioned Defendant $100,000 in compensatory and $150,000 in punitive damages, attorneys' fees, and court costs); Trigon Ins. Co. v. United States, 204 F.R.D. 277 (E.D.Va. 2001). (Willful destruction of documents results in adverse inference, expenses and attorneys fees in the amount of $179,725.70).

Attorneys may also be exposed to liability for not properly advising or supervising their clients. Courts have also sanctioned attorneys for lack of diligence in obtaining and producing computer records; GTFM, Inc., v. Wal-Mart Stores, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16244 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 8, 2000). In Metropolitan Opera Assoc., Inc. v. Local 100, 212 F.R.D. 178 (S.D.N.Y. 2003), the Court, upon being advised that the Local had simply thrown relevant computers away, sanctioned the Union, granting judgment against the Union on the merits of the case, and ordering the Union to pay Plaintiff's attorney fees related to discovery. The Court rejected less severe sanctions including adverse inference and preclusion on ground " it is impossible to know what the Met would have found if the Union and its counsel had complied with their discovery obligations from the commencement of the action." It is significant to note that at least one court has held that mere negligence in preserving or promptly producing electronic information is sanctionable. Residential Funding Corp. v. DeGeorge Fin. Corp., 306 F.3d 99 (2d Cir. 2002).

Please consider the contents of this correspondence to be an "Offer to Compromise" pursuant to the Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 408. Be aware that my client does not waive any rights that it may have to immediately initiating litigation, or to any claims or defenses that it may have.

I look forward to receiving your response.

Very truly yours,

Anthony J. DeGidio
Of Counsel
Fraser, Clemens, Martin & Miller LLC
28366 Kensington Lane
Perrysburg, OH 43551
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My response:
Hi Tony,

I am familiar with your work. I was considering you when I got sued by a TPS principal.

Anyway, I sent Jon the log in files last night, they don't work for me either.

http://swampbubbles.com/files/lucasgop.zip

That is the copy of the Web site I had stored on my computer when I needed to update it.

That is all I have. It would be a waste for you to go after me because I don't have
anything else to offer. I don't know what else to tell you.

Chris

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My post on GCJ
It is really interesting how these things play out. I think HistoryMike is proven correct again. I vote for a too.

The real story:
-Yes, the site is not working
-Yes, I was the one updating the site for the last month or so due to the party not updating it.
-Yes, the domain is not resolving.

-No, I did not take my toys and leave. Last night I e-mailed Bob the log in information as requested and I said Jon should call me directly if he has any questions. Jon has not called me. I was going to offer a copy of the site to him when he did, but he again misses an opportunity to show leadership. Nothing but more middle school behavior from the familiar nameless names.
-No, I don’t know who owns the domain name.
Since Jon decides to send nameless people to a Web site to post rumors about what happened and these nameless people lap it up like it is a milkshake then regurgitate it on blogs without thought (at the same time looking stupid doing it once you realized you just vomited), Jon can download the site at his convenience at http://swampbubbles.com/files/lucasgop.zip . Maybe if Jon were to have just asked I could have hosted the site or helped out, but it is becoming apparent the type of personality he has and his followers. This is a very self-destructive type of leadership and I am upping my bet in the pool.
-Now Jon has all of the toys I have.

From my own experience, it is easier to start another site than tracking down who did it. You have the files now, feel free to find your own host for them. A global find and replace can get the site up and running in 24 hrs.

BTW I did not design it, it was done in Frontpage, which no real Webmaster uses and the code and design suck. It was a liability for me to attach my name on such a poorly coded Web site, but they needed help and I volunteered.