Over the next few years a last determined effort was made by the cult to use the courts to staunch the flow. In America, the defectors were raided by federal marshals and scientology lawyers. Internet service providers - including those in Australia - were threatened unless they removed material. Fresh court cases began. Exhausted and broke, many defectors dropped off and US websites closed down.

That is when the Europeans took over. Andreas Heldal-Lund runs the Norwegian website Clambake (www.xenu.net) which has become the leading repository for Scientology texts and criticism of the cult. He has not been taken through the courts. "They started seeing that the more they got involved with these crazy people on the internet, the more they sued them, the more trouble they had."

Heldal-Lund is not a refugee from the cult but the managing director of a big US corporation in Norway who comes to this issue as a champion of free speech. He has not emerged unscathed. Like many critics who have conducted research on Scientology, he complains of attempts by the cult to intimidate him.

"They are good at shaking up," he told the Herald. "When they want to attack me, they don't go directly at me. They go to my ex-fiancee. They go to my employer or they go to people in the company I work for. They go to the guy I rent the house from. They never make direct claims but ask weird questions. They do all this planting of small seeds of mistrust so that people think, hmm there's something weird about this Andreas. This has been going on for years. This is what they're very, very good at."

But one Web site set up to criticize Scientology -- called Operation Clambake -- called the DDOS attacks a bad idea. "Attacking Scientology like that will just make them play the religious persecution card," wrote Andreas Heldal-Lund, the Web site's owner. "They will use it to defend their own counter actions when they try to shatter criticism and crush critics without mercy."

Operation Clambake offers the most persuasive explanations and examines cult brainwashing techniques, while elsewhere you can find help on how to beat the “free test” offered to newbies, and more information on how to spot a cult.

You’re free to make up your own mind. All this correspondent wants, aside from an urge to stay far away from the Church of Tom, is a way to get that insane cackle out of her head.
http://www.xenu.net/

Posted By : countessK on 26 January,2008
You ought to leave a link for someone who might want fair and balanced data instead of only leaving links to critics of Scientology. If the Scientology website is down then there is nowhere to go except the negative propaganda links you leave.

The article DOES link to scientology sites.
There are no positive scientology sites except those done by scientologists....duh!

Debating The Scientology DDoS Attacks
Religion's critics debate whether tactic accomplishes anything...

Last week a group of hackers named Anonymous announced they were waging war on Scientology for the religion's consistent attacks on critics, among other offenses. The primary thrust of the offensive appears to be DDoS attacks aimed at taking primary Scientology sites offline. Scientology ultimately hosted their web server with Prolexic Technologies, who specialize in protecting companies from such attacks. ABC News says the attacks were fairly run of the mill:

Over the past few days, the site was hit with several DDOS attacks, which flooded it with as much as 220Mbps of traffic. . . "220Mbps is probably about in the middle of attack sizes," Nazario said. "It's not just one or two guys hanging out in the university dorms doing this." On average, the attacks lasted about 30 minutes and used up 168M bps of bandwidth. In the past year, Arbor has seen attacks on other sites hit 40Gbps, or 200 times the strength of the Anonymous event.

Meanwhile longstanding critics of Scientology are coming out against the attacks, publicly stating they doubt they accomplish much of anything. Mark Bunker of anti-Scientology site xenutv posted a video saying the attacks may actually hurt other efforts to deal with the religious groups tactics. Anonymous issued another video today announcing protests on February 10.

According to Andreas Heldal-Lund, a free-speech campaigner from Norway and critic of Scientology, the "war" has been won by internet activists - with the wide dispersal of negative publicity about Scientology. Heldal-Lund welcomed the demonstrations but condemned the sabotage of Scientology websites.

"One of the biggest arguments against Scientology is they are a threat to free speech and here they can say people are hitting back at their free speech. It ruins our argument."

'Anonymous' first came to public attention when the group launched denial-of-service attacks against the Church's website, following the Church's attempts to remove a promotional video featuring Scientologist Tom Cruise from YouTube. Although YouTube is complying with the requests to remove the video, other sites such as Gawker.com have stated that they will continue hosting the video.

Fielding expert opinions on the Church's response, Wikinews turned to Andreas Heldal-Lund, the creator of the Operation Clambake project, as well as a former Scientologist who wished to remain anonymous. Or maybe is The Anonymous? "I believe strongly in freedom of speech and, living in the best country in the world, I came to the conclusion that I had to help protest this cult. To me CoS [Church of Scientology] was then, and still is, a fascistic organization and a real threat to our democratic principles," said Andreas Heldal-Lund, the creator of Operation Clambake.

"The strategy was to disarm the cult; if they took down something I linked to, I had made preparations to link to another copy or host it myself. The more they resisted it the more attention we got, the more the information was spread and the more people got involved. It felt like a cat and mouse game for many years. What for me started as a weekend stunt grew far beyond my initial scope and Operating Clambake became the site most critics linked and referred to," added Heldal-Lund.

Heldal-Lund states that the effort of the Church to remove criticism of its organization from the web is failing.

"The cult 'Orgs' are 'dead'. Recruiting in most western countries where they once experienced a healthy organic growth is very hard. All their most secret documents are spread beyond recall and easily available for anybody interested. More people than we ever dreamed now know about Scientology and at least that it 'smells fishy'. All the information we once fought day and night to protect is now easily available for free and on the top of Google. The cult has even given up threatening us," added Heldal-Lund who also said that there are "no major lawsuits ongoing or pending" against Operation Clambake.