Mark DiVincenzo, Jason Baletsa, Jaren Wilcoxson, Peter Bebergal, Perjurers, MIT seal, Lawyers

MIT Lawyers v. Dr. Thresher

December 7, 2020

MIT Lawyers v. Dr. Thresher was my (Dr. Duane Thresher's) fourth case; see Casebook on the Apscitu Law website. It was intertwined with and led to the cases Dr. Thresher v. MIT President Reif et MIT Lawyers and Dr. Thresher v. MIT Lawyer Baletsa. This case was my first as a defendant and happened after I had started Apscitu in Virginia and had long been an MIT alum.

As much as it hurts me to admit, MIT has dramatically decreased in IT excellence, including security — to the point of incompetence — from when I was getting my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science there. Like all other universities, they, i.e. non-MIT-alum MIT administrators, have traded off academic excellence — to the point of incompetence — for political correctness, particularly diversity. This incompetence has led to corruption. I cannot help but to try to fight all this, if just in protecting MIT's reputation I protect my own a little. Thus for years I have been fighting MIT about its political correctness, IT incompetence, particularly regarding email and security, and more recently corruption.

For example, for a long time I had been receiving email ads from MIT Professional Education that always had a black man and a white woman in the banner. See first email of email history, noting that for clarity the email history is from oldest at top to newest at bottom but that each email would have contained all the earlier emails as its included history, with newest at top, oldest at bottom.

MIT Professional Education offers courses to MIT alumni, and I have occasionally been interested but these email ads looked like yet another of MIT's programs that are restricted to minorities and women, i.e. no white men like myself allowed. Finally, on April 7, 2015, I just asked them whether I was allowed to take these courses; see second email of email history.

I got an automatic "on vacation" reply from , saying she would get back to me; see third email of email history. She never did get back to me. Later I found out that a few months after this incident, Sarah Foote left MIT after 17 years and ultimately ended up doing marketing for McLean Psychiatric Hospital outside Boston.

Seven weeks later I inquired again with "No response to my question?"; see fourth email (May 26) of email history. This time I received a response from Bhaskar Pant, saying I had "fallen through the cracks"; see bottom email (May 27) of email history.

More importantly, Pant said it was MIT policy to essentially ban photos of white men from all its ads in order to convey "diversity".

has been Managing Director of MIT Professional Education since 2008. In the 10 years before that he was teaching Asians to take over American jobs, both directly and through outsourcing, and, in support of that, doing forced diversity training for American companies. In 2008 there was a blockbuster comprehensive study that showed such diversity training, already controversial and likened to "reeducation" and "brainwashing", was ineffective and counterproductive; see Most Diversity Training Ineffective, Study Finds by Shankar Vedantam of the Washington Post. At that point Bhaskar Pant became Managing Director of MIT Professional Education and continues his forced diversity training in that position.

MIT, including the MIT Alumni Association (MITAA), does the same forced diversity training — banning photos of white men — in all its ads, usually sent by email.

Like most universities, MIT provides its alumni MIT email accounts. Mine is dr.duane.thresher@alum.mit.edu; see Secure Contact page. You would think that a university like MIT with the top electrical engineering and computer science department in the world would let that department run its email systems, as I have repeatedly suggested to them. Instead, MIT lets an IT incompetent English major from an obscure third-rate college hired for her political correctness, , run the alumni email system, as MITAA Executive Director of Information Systems & Volunteer Services (sic). Under her direction, the MIT alumni email system is all too frequently broken and/or insecure and/or being hacked. (See Google: Invasion of the Email Snatchers.)

On Halloween 2018 I received an email ad from the MITAA (as usual the lead photo could not be a white man). See first email of email history, noting that for clarity the email history is from oldest at top to newest at bottom but that each email would have contained all the earlier emails as its included history, with newest at top, oldest at bottom. At the bottom of the first page of this email it said

Phishing Attempts
The MIT Alumni Association has learned of recent phishing attempts from outside entities that have been sent to our alumni. Click here to learn more—and how to protect yourself.

As most even marginally IT competent people know, one of the most important email security protections is never to click on a link in an email, at least not without seeing what the actual link is and whether it is clearly related to the supposed sender. The "Click here" link in the MITAA email was

http://emclick.imodules.com/wf/click?upn=hpP9iphrV3FXP2t3GxIpBAhX-2FHAG0tsEWICDz1533JtH7anuH5Q6I17ZcmTd5yOe6d8XffQuZFZ4ZFFnpfJBju9Qv1ZcarH2ir4m2sbFnRY-3D_LEsB1I-2BBM3vSMwq2NJc9l1xA9A2d8lI-2BZdnWjgSVSpseDCGA8640NGySfQtMcixz-2BzaIYhxizkd7VzLAlLjqiveDkAinGsSl-2Bp03tzvecBtYxQ-2BBjrU5f5DctsJ7c-2B4nkuQk5J1b3kQ9ZiV-2BpPjAh0wyMFCUXtTBAxFDQmQDQjdCzoDJQaacVAo26s5qG2j89F0q5PoaI7ahlRcOiL1VuYdwxwZvUHb8PYGbddviNsunFDTN5pxwBYtbmW4M1iWQ89hmGo7aArrfwON5E3xrsPWMMLl8Y-2B1jQgJdM74llbY9zYlFjp90TNvxsQt4E80KiER43qCIQ037MdXJkJ8UMwbM856WjhCHCI78nfqZrto9F2DeMg1jfETAWXafHmAnyJcAFNu6DvncRX4MTwN5B6f1-2Fo-2BdMIfz1MN4BL5kgyrTczisyXiLVnFGguecmwTQwybb8UNYHKgjcrxRoYwcr-2FNMB8OzsovTD3ql0HZGYaTHgBey2EouyDjnqTnlJZpC

This is an extremely suspicious link. Advising someone to protect themselves from phishing by clicking on such a link is stupid and actually indicative of a phishing email.

I sent an email explaining this to MITAA, with a Cc to MIT President , who had himself done this same stupid thing in numerous emails to MIT alumni. See second email of email history.

As usual, I received only an automatic "on vacation" reply (see third email of email history), from (now Julie Fox), saying she would get back to me, which she never did. I did a little research and discovered that part of Barr's job description was "to ensure that all Alumni Association messages use best email practices" and that she only had a BA in sociology from an obscure third-rate college. She was also MITAA Digital Content and Editorial Manager, which allowed her to enforce MIT's "diversity" policy of no photos of white men allowed in any ads.

I then sent an email with this research, as well as explaining that automatic "on vacation" reply emails are themselves a serious security blunder. See fourth email (November 1) of email history. Besides MIT President , I also Cc'ed this email to MIT General Counsel , MIT lawyer , and MIT lawyer , since "Data and Privacy/Internet" was one of their legal practice areas.

Upon thinking about how insecure MITAA email had become, I then sent a "Data breach warning" email to these MIT lawyers, with a Cc to MIT President Reif, explaining this and its legal consequences. See fifth email (November 2) of email history.

While I was looking further into MIT IT security, I (actually my wife) discovered a very serious security vulnerability with the MIT Admissions website. All other MIT websites have domain names that end in mit.edu; e.g. MITAA is alum.mit.edu. Hackers are prevented from setting up fake websites, and email addresses, pretending to be MIT because .edu domain names are restricted to validated educational institutions. Domain names ending with .edu thus provide some authenticity; see Secure Contact page. (The Department of Commerce granted Educause the right to administer .edu domains. I've tested how easy it is to get a .edu domain name by trying to get one from them and it is reasonably difficult.)

However, the MIT Admissions domain name is mitadmissions.org. Like .com and .net, anyone can get a .org domain name. For example, I own the .com, .net, and .org versions of apscitu, apscitumail, apscitulaw, and stop-it-incompetence. MIT Admissions proudly advertises to the world, including hackers, at www.mitadmissions.org/about/about-web/ that it does not have an mit.edu address and the foolish reason why:

MITadmissions.org is the official website of MIT's Office of Undergraduate Admissions. We are located on our own domain (i.e., not on mit.edu) for historical reasons: when we started our blogs back in 2004, we had to use external hosting and an external domain name in order to do so. Since then, we've built up a following and sense of home at this domain, so we've just stayed here.

Marilee Jones was the IT incompetent Dean of Admissions at MIT from 1997 to 2007 (starting several years after I was at MIT), so was responsible for this domain name stupidity (the external hosting excuse is nonsense).

was a celebrity. She was the much interviewed and acclaimed author of a popular guide on the college admissions process, in which she strongly urged students not to lie on their college applications. In 2007 it was discovered that Marilee Jones herself had, as she rose up the MIT Admissions ladder, repeatedly and ever more egregiously lied on her resume. She only had a bachelor's degree from an obscure third-rate college, but on her first resume said she had a degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Later she gave herself a degree from Albany Medical College and near the end gave herself a Ph.D. Incompetent non-MIT-alum MIT administrators never noticed this impossibly changing resume and she was only caught when someone ratted her out, after which she resigned in disgrace.

Marilee Jones was also proudly responsible for instituting MIT Admissions' discrimination against white men (although also, as she admitted in an interview, she discriminated against Asians).

is the current IT incompetent Dean of Admissions, since 2008, and may be so because he was the one who ratted out Marilee Jones. He continues MIT Admissions' domain name stupidity and racist/sexist discrimination.

Given this MIT Admissions' domain name stupidity, hackers could get a domain name that was similar to, perhaps even more convincing than, the awkward mitadmissions.org, set up a convincing but fake MIT Admissions website, and, for example, bogusly accept online MIT admission application fees, which, being quite large, would make this a very profitable hack.

In IT, whenever a security vulnerability is reported it is standard procedure to provide a proof of concept, so I cheaply purchased mit-admissions.net and pointed it to a website with a quickly set up webpage that was indistinguishable (even the icon was the same) from the home page of the official MIT Admissions website, mitadmissions.org, and that when you clicked on it anywhere it sent you to another website, a harmless one in this case. (By the way, in line with the stated MIT "diversity" policy, photos, and even drawings, of white men are clearly banned from ever appearing on this MIT Admissions home page.)

I then sent an email to the MIT lawyers, with a Cc to and MIT Admissions, explaining this MIT Admissions security vulnerability, my proof of concept, how to easily fix the problem, and a requirement that they do so within 10 business days. See sixth (November 4) email in email history.

There was no response whatsoever within 10 business days so in my proof of concept I replaced the MIT Admissions home page copy with a different MIT Admissions spoof webpage and bought admissions-mit.org and alum-mit.org as two other domain names pointed to it. I even got an SSL certificate so the webpage would show as a secure webpage, i.e. https, instead of just http, and a lock icon next to it.

This MIT Admissions spoof webpage was intentionally written to be highly inflammatory, in order to finally get a response from MIT; everything said in it is true, but unvarnished. It's actually quite interesting and expands on some of the issues and people I have talked about above, as well as , the non-MIT-alum MIT Alumni Association CEO (again, another English major from a third-rate college). I wrote it (and this article) having learned much about libel law from my earlier cases; see "defamation" notes in the Legal Notes section of the About Apscitu Law page.

I then sent an email announcement of this MIT Admissions spoof webpage to the MIT lawyers, MIT Admissions, MIT President — particularly since he was featured on the webpage as leader of MIT's extreme political correctness — and most of the officers, including Chairman , and many of the members of the MIT Corporation, which control MIT. See seventh (November 28) email in email history.

The only relevant email response I got was a usual automatic "on vacation" reply from MIT lawyer . See bottom email in email history. (You'll hear more about MIT lawyer Jason Baletsa, as well as MIT President , later in Dr. Thresher v. MIT President Reif et MIT Lawyers, where Baletsa played a key role in covering up Reif's involvement in corruptly taking money from convicted child sex offender and trafficker , and in Dr. Thresher v. MIT Lawyer Baletsa, a national security case in preparation where leftist Baletsa hacked email accounts of major defense contractor MIT, including mine.)

The fix to MIT Admissions' security vulnerability that I explained to MIT would have been quick and inexpensive. I even offered to do this work myself; I'd already done most of the work by figuring it out and explaining it to them. It was foolish to do anything else but the fix.

Instead, MIT's response was that a few days after (December 5) my MIT Admissions spoof webpage email announcement, I received a threatening email from the webhoster I used for the website, Amazon Web Services (actually, AWS didn't do the webhosting per se, just rented me the cloud computer that I set up to do webhosting). The email threatened to turn off my website if I did not answer the charges made by MIT within 24 hours. See first email of email history, noting that for clarity the email history is from oldest at top to newest at bottom but that each email would have contained all the earlier emails as its included history, with newest at top, oldest at bottom.

The copyright (DMCA = Digital Millennium Copyright Act) charges MIT made against me were

The websites and their URLS [sic] — admissions-mit.org, mit-admissions.net, alum-mit.org — are infiging [sic] on MIT's trademarks both in their URLs and on the websites' use of MIT's official seal and images of the campus.

The MIT official making these legal charges was of the MIT Technology Licensing Office, clearly at the direction of the above MIT lawyers. You would think that to make such legal charges Bebergal himself should be a lawyer or have some legal training or at least not be a criminal. But no, Peter Bebergal is an admitted former(?) long-time drug addict, a failed divinity student, a failed writer (mostly and absurdly about how he was a drug addict for religious reasons so he's special), and a political correctness activist.

Working in the MIT administration (as yet another non-MIT alum) is a perfect refuge for Peter Bebergal's ilk. MIT administration jobs have good pay and benefits but require little work — one of the main reasons MIT tuition is so high — leaving employees plenty of time on the job to work on what they really want to do but can't make a living at, like writing (badly). It's also an opportunity to enforce political correctness.

I quickly wrote an overwhelming refutation of these charges using some very compelling points including:

Amazon Web Services sold me the domain names MIT says were "infiging" (Bebergal, the former(?) long-time drug addict bad writer, meant "infringing") their trademarks. If the domain names were infringing MIT's trademark, AWS would be in legal trouble, not me. MIT should get protected .edu domain names just as I suggested and they refused.

The campus image I used was a photo taken by a private party from a public sidewalk so MIT had no copyright on it.

I was using the accepted practice of a harmless proof of concept in pointing out a security vulnerability.

The webpage was also a political statement — the real reason MIT wanted it taken down — and the use of the MIT official seal is protected under the fair use clause of U.S. copyright law (Title 17 of U.S. Code, § 107 (fair use: criticism, comment, news reporting), as I had learned from my earlier cases; see "copyright" notes in the Legal Notes section of the About Apscitu Law page).

I welcomed a lawsuit; I would be a pro se litigant so couldn't be intimidated by the cost, which is often how lawsuits are won, and I would have subpoena access to MIT's records.

Because it was so easy to refute the charges, as the MIT lawyers knew, I also pointed out that MIT did not make these charges in good faith and so had perjured itself. In their statement of charges, MIT, via , swore

I am providing this notice in good faith and with the reasonable belief that rights MIT's rights [sic] are being infringed.

Under penalty of perjury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the authority to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright(s) and trademarks involved.

This makes the MIT lawyers who instituted these charges — , , — and perjurers.

Within a few hours that same day, I sent my refutation email to Amazon and Peter Bebergal, with a Cc including the MIT lawyers, MIT Admissions, MIT President , and most of the officers of the MIT Corporation, including Chairman , and many of its members, as well as editors of the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. See second email of email history.

The next day Amazon sent me an email saying they would not be turning off my MIT Admissions spoof website. See third (December 6) email of email history.

The day after that I forwarded Amazon's email, with subject I win, to everyone I had sent my refutation email to, particularly the MIT lawyers. See bottom (December 7) email of email history.