[arin-discuss] Legacy RSA

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, Steve Bertrand wrote:
> 
> I'm thankful that I'm an operator and not a politician. The only time
> I've ever known anyone to have so much time to dig up dirt on others is
> in politics. What a waste of production time.

This is the ARIN membership list. The membership have to consider how 
ARIN is run.

I see that you are an operations person. This is not an operations list.  
Perhaps your CEO or CFO or corporate counsel is the appropriate contact
for this list. Its probably your company that is the member of ARIN.  
These issues and arguments are probably hard to follow if you aren't
already qualified to be a CEO or CFO, and know something about the rules
and laws the govern the operation of corporations, rather than the
operation of networks.  I'll try to put the issues in different terms.
But if you don't know what a fiduciary is, or what it means to violate
the charter of a corporation, or if you are totally ignorant of business
law, then you'll won't be able to understand much.  But the CEO or CFO
should, particularly if their company is publicly traded or has more
than a few shareholders.

> If anything, for sanity sakes, at least propose a solution to what you
> think is wrong instead of a blanket 'get rid of the board and the AC'
> with a boat load of crap to go with it.

I think you expect a technical solution to an organizational and legal
problem. A non-profit membership organization has rules that it must
follow.  What is wrong is that those rules have been broken. When such
rules are broken, the Board Members, who are supposed to ensure the
rules and laws are followed, resign or are removed. In more serious
cases, suit or sometimes, depending on the facts, criminal charges can
be filed.

In this case, what is wrong is that a number of the Board Members are
suspected of ties to organized crime.  "Organized crime" is not a
misapplied term. There was a Temporary Restraining Order to that effect
(7 claims including intentional and negligent misrepresentation,
extortion, and violation of the Colorado Organized Crime Control Act)
against one Board Member. This Board Member (Vixie) has also pretended
to be an extreme anti-spammer.  But it has been learned recently that
Vixie is/was a Board Member of a spam company known as Whitehat, and has
been since the 1990s.  Vixie used his MAPS blacklist to interfere with
his Whitehat competition. Vixie also told people that his blacklist
efforts were non-profit. This also turned out to be false.

When the TRO was filed, it wasn't known that Vixie was making money from
these operations. Vixie claimed to be making no money on the MAPS
effort. It wasn't know that this was false, and it wasn't known that he
was making money from spam.  So, the Attorneys could only conclude that
Vixie was simply harming the other company improperly; They made him
stop. But later we have learned that Vixie was earning profit from MAPS
and had interests in a spam company. So, Vixie was a spammer using a
commercial blacklist to hurt his competition. Making money from that
changes the nature of the activity.

NANOG has engaged in activities to encourage unlawful access to email by
misleading network operators to think that Electronic Communications
Privacy Law don't apply to ISPs.  Anyone who objected, (including
myself, but there were many others) were silenced. I was threatened with
physical violence.  So many were silenced that in 2005 a reform effort
was organized, but failed to halt the objectionable behavior.

A number of NANOG personalities have engaged in very disturbing
behavior:
 -- They have disrupted the network facilities of spammers who were
competitors of Vixie/Joffe/Levine/Everett-Church's spam operation,
whitehat.com
 -- They have engaged in their own spam operations while inciting
network operators to assist them (illegally) to work against their spam
competitors.
 -- Unrestrained threats of violence against people who offered 
reasonable (and it turns out correct) opinions that privacy laws apply 
to ISPs.
 -- They have intentionally disrupted AV8 Internet's network.
 -- They have falsely claimed that Netblocks used by AV8 Internet are
hijacked.
 -- Susan Harris and others have attempted to suppress information about
disreputable blacklists.
 -- They have engaged in extortion of SAVVIS with Spamhaus, forcing
SAVVIS to terminate its CAN-SPAM compliant customers by using
confidential SAVVIS documents provided by a SAVVIS employee.  Spamhaus
ROKSO doesn't list Vixie/Joffe et al's Whitehat. The SAVVIS disruption
probably benefited Whitehat as well.

These are not proper activities for an educational organization. So
NANOG isn't a proper recipient of ARIN funds for those reasons. This
NANOG activity has benefited Vixie and others.  Curran, Manning,
Woodcock, Conrad, Vixie all participated in NANOG during the period of
this activity.  They made no objection and went along with this improper
activity, even when serious charges of ties to organized crime surfaced.  
But even if it weren't for those reasons, NANOG _STILL_ wouldn't be a
proper recipient of ARIN funds, because ARIN isn't chartered to give
funds to groups like NANOG, and because the ARIN Board Members have
conflicts of interest.

Because of the lack of charter to support NANOG, and the conflict of
interest of Board Members the funds given to NANOG were improper.  The
transfer is even more improper due to the nefarious non-educational
activities of NANOG and the ties persons suspected of ties to organized
crime.  The impoperly transferred ARIN funds given to NANOG through
unjustified conference fees and through a $50,000 lump sum, add to
approximately $120,000. 

Then we have the issue of the unjustified tradeshows such as VON. That
expense is buried in the $1.2million travel line item.  That line item
increased by 46% or about $400,000 recently. There is some improper
spending (several VON's at least) and there appears to be lot more there
to be discovered on a close look.

Altogether, these issues mean that Curran, Manning, Vixie, and Woodcock
are unfit to be fiduciaries of ARIN and should be removed as Board
Members of ARIN.

> Whether someone is a criminal, has been accused of being a criminal or
> was a criminal, if they can adequately suit the needs of the people
> they are serving, why judge them on that. Cast the first stone.

That's just the point: They aren't serving the needs of the people they
are serving. They are serving their own interests.  Perhaps that's the
end result that operations people can understand.

> It is claimed that ARIN is wasting money because there is no benefit
> to the community they serve (WRT spending on travel for trade shows).
> However, there has been no documentation to the contrary that states
> their spending on attendance to these trade shows has had a negative
> impact either.

That's not the criterion for spending money for a corporation,
particularly a non-profit corporation.  I suggest you try submitting an
expense report that says "the company wasn't harmed by this expense". In
fact, any expense that is unjustified or unjustifiable, harms the
corporation because it improperly wastes the companies resources. When
that expense adds to at least $120,000, and may go higher still, people
will take notice.

		--Dean

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