| > Editing it would only affect what you see on your own client. I know. I mentioned I was editing list on clients' (plural) PCs. > Usenet is a distributed system - every server that didn't filter the group was hosting the content. Right. I had found a physical address of hard drives containing the data. That it wasn't the only location of the data might not have mattered to an LEO. It all depended on how many gold stars this type of bust generated (at that time). Hindsight recognizes here that the odds were against LEO being particularly interested. External political pressure may have changed that. > It sounds like you were tracing your own ISP's server? Multiple clients, multiple ISPs. IIRC I determined that AT&T was supplying NNTP to all of them. > On that note some from upstate New York may remember that the attorney general tried to garner votes by raiding and seizing servers from a few local ISPs (Dreamscape, RIP), which in the end didn't work out. When one grandstands in the press, one takes one's chances. Quiet LEO actions work a differently shuffled deck. > The FBI was quite well aware of the content on Usenet and very adept at navigating it in its heydey. Absolutely. However, the one action they never, ever, ever took was anything at all against the corporate hosts and suppliers of that data. There are many strong possibilities for this, some understandable and some corrupt. |