Penet Remailer - Second Compromise

Second Compromise

The second reported compromise of the Penet remailer occurred in February 1995 at the behest of the Church of Scientology. Claiming that a file had been stolen from one of the Church's internal computer servers and posted to the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology by a Penet user, representatives of the Church contacted Interpol, who in turn contacted the Finnish police, who issued a search warrant demanding that Julf hand over data on the users of the Penet remailer. Initially Julf was asked to turn over the identities of all users of his remailer (which numbered over 300,000 at the time), but he managed a compromise and revealed only the single user being sought by the Church of Scientology.

The anonymous user in question used the handle "-AB-" when posting anonymously, and their real e-mail address indicated that they were an alumnus or alumna of the California Institute of Technology. The document he posted was an internal report by a Scientology private investigator, Gene Ingram, about an incident that had occurred involving a man named Tom Klemesrud, a BBS operator involved in the Scientology versus the Internet controversy. The confusing story became known on the Internet as the "Miss Blood Incident".

Eventually the Church learned the real identity of "-AB-" to be Tom Rummelhart, a Scientologist and computer operator responsible for some of the maintenance of the Church of Scientology's INCOMM computer system. The fate of "-AB-" after the Church of Scientology learned his true identity is unknown. Years later in 2003, a two-part story entitled "What Really Happened in INCOMM - Part 1" and "What Really Happened in INCOMM – Part 2" was posted to alt.religion.scientology by a former Scientologist named Dan Garvin, which described events within the Church leading up to and stemming from the Penet posting by "-AB-".