The Mystery of Damien Casablanca
this originally appeared on The Complete Unofficial TEMPEST Information Page...
July 20, 2003 - The evening of Friday, July 18, 2003, a family member phoned me about a review on of my new book, Secrets of Computer Espionage: Tactics & Countermeasures, that was appearing on Amazon.com. He was rather excited about the review, and after our conversation I headed out to Amazon to check it out. It was pretty interesting, and I immediately copied and pasted it into some email that I sent my editors at Wiley. Here’s the review:
- 5 out of 5 stars
- It's sales are being controlled by law enforcement in the UK, July 15, 2003
- Reviewer: Damien Casablanca from UK
Magnificent book. I've purchased it through my channels a fortnight ago in
the US. I liked it so much that I'd decided to obtain another copy to give
somebody as a present. I happened to be in Newcastle-upon-Tyne , UK , at
the time. So I went to the biggest Watrestones bookshop in the city at the
Emerson Chambers. I asked whether I could possibly order the book as they
didn't have it in stock. The senior sales assistant was very nice and in a
somehow embarrased voice said : "I'm terribly sorry about this but we have
the request from the law enforcement authorities to pass to them all the
details of whoever tries to place an order for the book." And I said that
I didn't understand why. The response was : " There was the special note
on our system saying that every bit of information of whoever wants to buy
a book should go to the law enforcement first. "So , I said : "What are
their going to do with that information ?" The response was : "I don't
know, we never had anything like this before." So , I couldn't buy a
copy then and there, or even order it. But I thought for myself : "I was
right about the book. It is a REALLY good one. It REALLY makes somebody
feel very-very UNEASY."
Hmmmm. I had no idea whether the reader’s comments were true or not, there
was no contact information and the name Damien Casablanca was likely a pseudonym, so I also forwarded a copy of the review to John Young
(cryptome.org) in hope that one of his readers in the UK might be able to verify whether purchasers and potential purchasers of the book were being tracked by law enforcement.
The next morning, Saturday, July 19, I checked Amazon again, and the review was no longer there. Fortunately for my own sanity, several people had seen it, so I knew I wasn’t hallucinating.
So, what’s going on? Is it tinfoil hat time with some government conspiracy or is there a more mundane explanation? Are Damien Casablanca’s comments real or is this some kind of a hoax? I’ve asked Wiley to use their contacts with Amazon to try to find out why the review was pulled (I have my suspicions that whoever posted it didn’t use the normal review submission process, but may have added carefully formatted text to the top of an existing review so it appeared as a separate, unique review – why, is a good question). I’ve also asked Wiley to do some checking in the UK to determine if law enforcement is indeed tracking the book. John Young has kindly mentioned the incident on
Cryptome, in case any of his UK readers may have some insights. (And if you live in the UK and want to do some sleuthing for me, I'd appreciate it.)
With the political climate in the US and UK, obviously stranger things have happened, but I’m certainly not ready to jump to any conclusions until I get more information.
July 21, 2003 Update - Thanks to John Young, I'm starting to get
some feedback from the UK that is leading me to believe that the book review was
a hoax. See: http://cryptome.org/uk-book-fear.htm
I'm still waiting for additional confirmation (especially a comment from Amazon)
before I consider this mystery at least partially solved.
September 7, 2003 Update - I guess I'll never know for sure what happened with this. The UK bookstore denied the incident ever happened so my publisher requested that the Amazon review be pulled. Then Damien Casablanca contacted John Young and said it did happen. And a number of people in the UK said it was possible, while others thought it was some kind of publicity stunt (the correspondence is documented here). Amazon pulled the review, but then it reappeared again, then disappeared. (I now think my suspicions about hacked reviews don't have much merit, but Amazon's user-submitted review system is just buggy.)