Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

You may want to contact Gavin de Becker who wrote "The Gift of Fear," and has worked as a violence/stalking expert. His site is https://www.gavindebecker.com/aboutourFirm.cfm

I guess it goes along with being something of a celebrity.

The worst vice is advice, but since it's been solicited...

If this individual turns out to know where you live and can send you a photo of your house, naturally, contact the police. You may also look into hiring a private investigator to identify him, give you some background info and keep tabs on the guy.

In addition to keeping a solid home security system, you might be able, as something of a celebrity with real threats against you, to arrange with your local police or sherrif's department to do some extra patrols around your neighborhood. You might also be able to find private security firms to consult with or patrol your neighborhood. In extreme cases, you can hire bodyguards full-time or on occasion.

Finally, you and your family could make time for self-defense courses in various martial arts and/or weapons training. Make it a family outing...? Additionally, if you're living in Indiana, you or the wife would have no problem getting permits to carry firearms. There's always pepper spray, mace, tazers, and stun-guns if firearms aren't for you. That's not to mention personal alarms, GPS locators, etc.

It's most important to keep a clear head, and avoid letting internet idiots make you irrationally paranoid. The odds of anything serious ever happening remain very, very slim, and a modicum of precaution, preparation and training/equipping can decrease the odds substantially.

Good luck, and please don't go into obscurity!

You might want to talk with Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs. He gets this type of stuff all the time and is also very savvy at diagnosing how dangerous the the offending parties may be. You'd probably think his site is a bit over the top, but he could be a resource.

Logically, if he had such a picture, and if he were an actual threat, I somehow doubt he would threaten to send it.

I think a real threat would just send it with no way of connecting it to him.

What he's doing is extremely stupid (also, I would think, already illegal), and I'm sorry for you and your family.

Do what you think is right.
If it was me I'd be contacting the FBI or the Indy police about it. They have the tools to find out who this guy is so let them do their job. No, that's not wussing out. That's manning up and doing what you need to do how you need to do it, legaly. But that's me.
It doesn't sound like you want to 'blog fight' with this guy(the Deb Frisch/Protein Wisdom saga of last summer) so I wouldn't go to LGF. I'd go straight to the fuzz--if he's that good they'll call him for a hand if they need it.
Mostly, no, you aren't acting paranoid, Tom. You're behaving rationally to an irrational problem and not 'being a jerk' by contemplating further action. Just do what you suspect is prudent. You'll feel better if you do.

I'm the "Den Beste" referred to. For a while I ran a forum on my server. Pengun was one of the participants, but I eventually got tired of his antics and banned him. He snuck back in again, and I banned him again.

In July of 2002 I realized that I wasn't enjoying moderating the forum, and decided to shut it down because it was ruining my enjoyment of my blog, USS Clueless. However, I kept making posts on USS Clueless until July of 2004, and the archives for USS Clueless remained online after that -- and continue to remain online to this day.

I eventually started blogging again under the name Chizumatic, with a different scope (anime and entertainment) in October of 2004.

As to sending me a picture, I don't recall any such thing happening. But if it had, it wouldn't have been particularly shocking since I use my real name, which is very unusual, and my address is in the phone book. So if anything like that did happen, then the reason I don't remember it is because my reaction was, "Yeah, so what?"

Tom-

If your blogging software logs the IP address of the commenter, as most of them do, it might be worth doing a lookup of the IP address and seeing if it is registered to anyone in particular using the WHOIS function of ARIN.net.

Another thing to do is to look at the raw e-mail headers, if he has sent you e-mail, and see what e-mail server it has come from, as well as what account it has come from. Most e-mail programs have some function that will allow you to do this.

If the threats continue, contact the ISP that the connection he uses is coming from or the ISP that is responsible for sending the e-mail. Most will have an abuse@yyy.zzz type e-mail address for you to address your concerns to. It should be listed in the ARIN.net WHOIS lookup data.

If the threats continue, save the logs and messages as evidence, as you may need it for a cyberstalking or cyberterrorism case. Making threats on-line is considered illegal in most states.

If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me through my website or via the e-mail address I've left in the comments header.

Last time I heard from Pengun was 2.5 years ago. He was using email address "crcarson" on a host in British Columbia.

As a rule, we find it best to allow all comments -- viewpoint is irrelevant, and we welcome opposing views far more than sycophantry.

However, when people are unable to engage opposing viewpoints proactively or politely, it goes without saying that they should be banned. It is an occasionally necessary step in an open internet forum to keep debate civil and constructive.

Having said that, such banning this should happen quietly and behind the scenes. There will always be "blog terrorists" poisoning the well, and they should be banned in quiet to keep the commenting community healthy. It does not have to be the subject of a blog post, as it opens you up to charges of censorship, and indicates Indeed, don't you see how you're losing the 4GW battle when you do that?!

I would contact The Law if someone sent pictures of my home along with threats. The guy probably has some sort of crazy scheme where you end up naked in the Lincoln memorial in D.C., Thank you for Blogging?. Guns are always great, they are fun to own and in the absolute worst case scenerio you are able to shoot bad people who are doing bad things.

p.s.: People named Chet are probably not a threat.

Thanks for this article. I thought I was the only one that dealt with this guy and his volatile personality. Apparently, he's even worse with others.

Sean,
Personal defensive measures, driven by concerns like yours and Tom's, could be the primary forcer behind the development of a more holographic, decentralized, post-personal web-construct.

Jeff Goldstein at Protein Wisdom reacted to his whackos by engineering himself into a chimera. He physically moved his family leaving no forwarding address, and diversified himself by crafting PW into a group, "front" blog of pseudonymous bloggers. These dodging, moving targets prevent unethical detractors from focusing their harrassments on any one person.

Maybe you and Tom can borrow from Jeff's response.

Just goes to show you -- every society has its al Qaeda types.

I'm glad America doesn't empower ours.

Going premium and getting a value exchange for your content could weed out the unfriendlies.

But, my first thought is to reassess the blog's role in your movement. Isn't this form running its course? Yours is one of only two I visit and I have felt for some time that you are mostly bouncing rubble around.

Good that you are there to handle the crushes after TV appearances/special events, but even that has its limits.

It is also great corpus for researching your work and that has value.

But, diminishing returns creep in. Years ago we stopped a successful chat room at our venue because it just counterintuitively degraded our core objectives...despite its gratifying buzz factor. We refocused efforts on more traditional modes...in our case shows, in your case books, articles and stand-ups.

Movements like this go through this progression:

1. Start Up - get it up and running
2. Launch and Learn - try things and keep what works
3. Explosion - replicate and expand what works
4. Critical Mass - become the new normal (or New Rules?) in your field
5. Sunset - at the moment of maximum impact, rethink everything, big announcement, then give your people a soft landing and future vision

I see this blog somewhere between Critical Mass and Sunset.

If you keep the blog, I will still appreciate it and I think your window on your family and career progression does add to your impact especially outside your pol/mil roots.

But, I also wouldn't mind if you went dark from time to time and I heard about your work from out of left field.

It's okay to give this up, but if you stay, stay safe...your movement will progress if it adds value regardless of the blog.

Praying for safety and continued success.

Thanks. All good info.

No worries. This guy doesn't rank in the top 100 of serious pains-in-the-ass, which is why I chose him for this exchange.

Everyone needs excuses for fine-tuning...

Tom, Adriftatsea is correct---ID his IP address in the post and go to www.arin.net--that's the American Registry of Internet Numbers---the folks that hand out IP space to ISPs. Drop that IP into their lookup field, hit submit. Similarly, his email to you will have the IP address the mail he sent originated from---the IP address at the very bottom of the header is where it started. Same deal as the IP in the blog logs---query ARIN and see if the network operator is the same etc.

ARIN will have that IP address and the "owner" of the IP address listed. That owner is a network operator, like Cox, Comcast, Verizon etc. They will have an "abuse" email and/or "admin" contact listed on ARIN.

Call them and/or email them with the backstory and ask them to confirm their policy on threats etc. You will need the time/date stamp of the post and the IP address posting, and any emails with headers he sent. ALL ISPs I'm aware of do NOT allow that type of behavior per their AUP. IF they drag their feet in responding, contact their legal dept at corporate---they will respond, as it is illegal in most states to cyberstalk.

Since the ISP is in a sense enabling this behavior, they will act and seek to shut this user down. Will it stop him permanently? no---as he'll just get another connection with some other ISP. However, the ISP will know this user's identity. An ISP can ID any user on it's network. They will not reveal that info with out a subpoena, but in this case, since you have plenty of legal backstory, you should be able to ratchet it up a notch and get an ID on this guy.

Ideally you do that process BEFORE his current ISP shuts his connection down---ISPs churn their user data quickly. As he could be reading this right now, I'd just remind him the Internet is not that anonymous! If he's coming from a free 'hotspot' or library (public access) then it'll be tougher, but I'd bet if the guy is semi-literate, he's likely employed and given the cost of access anymore, he likely is paying for it at his house/business.

If you need more help, let me know.
Eric

Re: Brian Hertzer's comments -- I'm new to Tom's work, this blog, and the books. This blog serves an important role for those are just uncovering this content area and Tom's contribution to it. Don't underestimate the blog's value, or overestimate Tom's exposure: I never heard his name before I heard him on C-SPAN a few months ago. My interest in global security was fleeting until a life-changing summer spent dodging Katyushas in northern Israel.