he just didn’t know.

thanx again for the note. -bc

Of course IPs can be spoofed quite easily, and I would think an expert witness to that effect would be sufficient to place “reasonable doubt” in the minds of a jury.

But this probably wasn’t used a “primary” evidence, but rather led the DA in the right direction to obtain more solid evidence, placing the issue beyond *any* doubt.

Had the Golbs been more aware of how IP networks operate, they would have been able to hide their tracks, it’s fortunate that they were not CS experts.

Much thanks for your sleuthing, and for sending the results to the appropriate authorities.

you are correct in your observation: in scholarship, reputation and credibility are the coin of the realm. while it is difficult to quantify reputation and credibility, the fact that golb went to the lengths he did (i.e., impersonation, forgery, etc.) to harm dr. schiffman is disturbing, and as we now see, criminal.

the affidavit is a request for a search warrant. the da’s office would have to show the evidence to the judge, who grants the search warrant based upon probable cause. the judge was convinced, and sure enough, the evidence appears to support the involvement of raphael golb and his father, norman golb, in the smear campaign. i managed to collect the ip address information using publicly available tools online. i also harvested ip addresses from the headers of emails that golb sent to my faculty. the da’s office managed to confirm this and more by apparently comparing the ip addresses with user and billing information from golb’s various internet service providers.

I wonder if the statutes take this into consideration, or treat this case like any other identity theft for purely financial gain.

My primary concern with the affidavit is the many allegations of aliases without presenting evidence, something that usually requires a court order to obtain. How did the writer know, for example, that “oshua.reznick@yahoo.com” was an alias for R. Golb, and how do we know that is correct? Anyone could have created that Yahoo account, Yahoo itself would know only the claimed identity of that user, and even if subpoened could not provide the actual identity beyond any reasonable doubt.