Jay Currie, Richard Warman's computers, and the Cools post

As many readers know, a nasty racist screed was made about Anne Cools in September 2003 on Marc Lemire's Freedomsite. During a hearing before the CHRT, Bernard Klatt argued that the author of that post was probably Richard Warman, who denied it under oath. The allegation that was subsequently repeated by a number of other bloggers whom Warman sued. The matter is now slowly working its way through the courts.

I have discussed the evidence extensively on this blog and came to the conclusion that:

1. there is no evidence that Warman is the author of the Cools post, 
2. Warman's computer could not be the source of the Cools post, 
3. Bernard Klatt's testimony before the CHRT was seriously deficient.

A recent news article discussing the case (here) was noticed by long-time blogger (and talented photographer) Jay Currie (here). Someone cited several of my postings on the subject, to which Jay responded (here):

I am aware of Buckets work, Harry, as you will see from the comments on those articles – however this was not “an investigation” nor were these “findings”. And, probably most to the point, virtually all of buckets work relies on the assumption that Lucy only had one computer. Now, he has entered a computer in evidence – though he won’t let the defence actually look at it – and it is a laptop computer. What are the chances that a super, duper, whooper secret internet hate buster like Lucy would only have one computer? And his wife? Perhaps she has a computer? And perhaps he has a computer from the CHRC or DOD. buckets is interesting but not at all depositive.

I am, of course, happy to learn that Jay finds me interesting. In saying that my work assumes that Warman had only one computer, however, he rather misses the point, since the one-computer thesis is not mine, but Klatt's.

If we ignore trivialities like the fact that Warman had a yahoo email and the Cools' poster had one from hotmail, Klatt's argument is twofold (see Klatt's affidavit, §§ 22-41):

1. that Warman's visits the site in October and November were made through the Rogers IP 66.185.84.204, the same IP as the Cools poster had used (see esp. §35)
2. that Warman's computer and computer of the Cools poster were configured identically and were therefore the same computer (see esp. § 36)

I have demonstrated that neither point helps identify the Cools poster:

1. Rogers set up 66.185.84.204 to act as a web-caching proxy, which means that it channelled the traffic of any of Rogers 800,000 subscribers or anyone who had access to their computers
2. The computer that Warman used to visit the site three times was different from the Cools poster's in several key respects, and Klatt misunderstood the logs he was using

Now Jay proposes a second computer. Does this help? Not really. Klatt's argument is that the IP was the same and the computer was the same. If the computer was not the same, all that's left is the IP, which was shared with millions.


(Comments welcome.)

Deep thought

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