Country: Germany
Name: Roland Gottschlag (German)
Personal Details: Information Technology Specialist (male)
Location and date of incident: Haunau, Frankfurt area, Germany, August 2002
Description:
Having been actively working with the Internet for about five years, for many Falun Gong practitioners, Mr. Gottschlag is regarded as the ‘contact person’ with respect to the Internet, E-mail security and computer viruses. He has effectively become practitioners’ protection from hacker.
Mr. Gottschlag found that a disturbing trend was developing; E-mail attacks and attacks by hackers against Falun Gong practitioners were becoming everyday occurrences. This included E-mails that were contaminated with viruses, which could not be traced.
He had also taken note of the increase in the abuse of e-mail addresses; more specifically, e-mails from “questionable persons”. The e-mails were recognisable by their Chinese/German grammatical language errors, and contained content which slammed Falun Gong practitioners’ mailboxes with propaganda mass mailings.
The type of messages sometimes contained smut, misleading information and/or insulting and threatening messages.
Hacker attacks: On one occasion, the “gmx” mail account belonging to Mrs. Zhou Lei was attacked. Mr. Gottschlag recalled that when he investigated the attack, “a Chinese hacker intensely attacked and threatened me personally.”
There has also been an instance where a hacker in the United States located Mr. Gottschlag’s pertinent Internet data within five minutes of being connected to the internet. The hacker also blocked his Linux connection. After inspecting the log files on his computer, there have also been attempts to get into his computer system.
Phone Tapping: While testing the system after the hacking, Mr Gottschalg discovered that his telephone was tapped and was being listened to. The local telephone provider has verified that strange noises, which can be heard, are not supposed to be there. To double check, fake information was sent to a friend, in which case the information that resulted confirmed the suspicion of phone tapping.
Damage to Personal Property: One day during the Chinese Presidents visited to Germany, Mr. Gottschlag’s doorbell rang, repeatedly and urgently. Some officials from the Hanau Public Service Department had responded to a call concerning a large oil spill under his automobile, which was parked on the street. The fluid coming from the car was gasoline. Mr. Gottschlag commented that the ‘leak must have occurred recently or “the gas tank would already be empty and the authorities would have been there sooner.” This is evident by the fact that the car had been in the same place for four days.
On the day’s of the event, a local lady told that she had observed Chinese individuals in dark suits walking up and down across the street. If approached, the individuals would turn around and walk the other way.
At the car garage it was discovered that someone had tried to use a flat pair of pliers to cut and sever the fuel line under the passenger’s seat. Inspecting the fuel line clearly showed this.
Breaking and Entering: During a period when Mr. Gottschlag and his family were away from home, his computer was found to have been tampered with. Two Microsoft Windows programs had either been cancelled or been forced to crash.
A tap in via the internet has been ruled out, since the internet connection was not through a telephone connection and passwords offered extra protection. Also a power shortage has been ruled out because two other, different systems, were still functioning.
The thought of an ordinary burglary has been abandoned, since there was cash lying in sight that was not touched. Nothing else was disturbed.
Mr. Gottschlag also commented that “similar things have happened to other practitioners, and I had already experienced things like that during the time of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (East Germany’s Communist Regime) and also during the 1970s and 1980s.”
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