A Drawer Full of Sockpuppets: Another Neal Rauhauser ‘Persona’ Exposed
Posted on | July 2, 2012 | 44 Comments
Neal Rauhauser was a speaker at the 2010 Netroots Nation conference
“Soliciting assistance in his plots — recruiting a gang of followers — functions psychologically as a means for Rauhauser to validate his grandiose narcissistic conception of himself as a heroic leader.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, June 15
FROM AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
One of the most persistent characteristics of Neal Rauhauser is his use of online aliases. He’s a sort of sockpuppet factory and once wrote that he had created more than 100 Twitter accounts. Some of those accounts were apparently created for Democrat politicians who had hired Rauhauser’s Progressive PST consulting firm. However, it is known that Rauhauser has also operated a number of intentionally deceptive online aliases, the protection of which was the subject of a very interesting treatise Rauhauser wrote on “persona management.”
Did I say “very interesting”? Why would Rauhauser be so obsessively concerned with “IP address concealment,” offering advice on how to protect a “persona” on a laptop with such elaborate measures that these secrets would be secure even “if you’re arrested and questioned”?
What criminal online behavior, conducted under a secret identity, requires that kind of protection? We can only speculate on possible answers to that question, and let’s just stick to the known facts: Rauhauser habitually uses online personas, such as the “Gaped Crusader” alias with which he cyberstalked and harassed Patrick “Patterico” Frey.
So today, while researching some background on the Progressive PST consulting firm that Rauhuaser co-founded with Beth Becker in 2009, I stumbled onto a Daily Kos diary from March 2010:
I had a back channel discussion with a member of [Georgia Democrat Rep. Hank Johnson’s] staff, and Congressman Johnson gave us a truly amazing thirty minutes of his time on Monday, answering questions about health care reform, his job as the southeast regional whip, and giving us some insight into what Congress will do next … and how we can help.
Present for the interview were Sandi Behrns, Karoli Kuns, Jesse LaGreca, Beth Becker, and Neal Rauhauser.
Hmmmm. Becker and Rauhauser are both mentioned, along with Sandi Behnns, who subsequently joined Progressive PST in 2010. This item about the Hank Johnson interview was the last DKos diary posted under the account called simply “twitter,” and it aroused my curiosity.
The “twitter” DKos account was created in October 2009 and posted 10 diaries and 68 comments before becoming inactive after March 23, 2010. What sort of subject matter did “twitter” write about? One was the “Kossack Twitter Mojo Report,” which showed that Neal Rauhauser’s account (“Stranded Wind”) was one of the top 10 Daily Kos contributors, according to Klout rankings. Although Rauhauser had only 1,056 followers on Twitter as of March 19, 2010, his Klout ranking was nearly as high as DKos founder Markos Moulitsas, who had 11,541 followers.
The first time the “twitter” account ranked Kossacks by their “mojo” (on Feb. 26, 2010) Rauhauser actually ranked second and “twitter” wrote:
[T]he ranking system we use, @Klout, can determine how many of those followers are actually paying attention. This is important — remember those automated processes? Twitter is infested with salesbots and they breed. If you get one and you don’t promptly squish it the next day it’ll have a dozen of its species follow you and it’ll spiral out of control from there. @StrandedWind does the programming for this stuff and he blocks five accounts for every four real people he gets.
What about the ones without any True Reach at all? Well, to get the full picture on an account they have to sign up for a @Klout account. We can get them to rank lists for us, but digging through followers requires that they have Oauth access, a safe way to share details about your account with their service.
We like Klout for rankings but it changes slowly, just like a real world poll. You definitely need an account there to fully participate, but for day to day exploration @Twitalyzer does similar things and it has lots of fun ways to look at your position on Twitter, find others who are interested in the same things you are, and so forth. If you’re brand new and looking for good people to connect with you should take some of the more active people on this list and put them into @Followerwonk.
If you want to get on [Twitter] and get hooked up right away Followerwonk is an immense help. One of the very best places to start is checking into the friends that are shared by @StrandedWind and @Sandibehrns, two of the top rated Progressive activists on Twitter.
You see? The “twitter” account was actually Rauhauser, using a third-person sockpuppet voice that would proclaim to the progressive community at Daily Kos — the top blog on the Left — that Neal Rauhauser was really a super-savvy social-networking guy.
Self-promotion was one of the original purposes of Rauhauser’s deceptive sockpuppetry. This “twitter” account is at least the third DKos identity Rauhauser is known to have used, along with “Stranded Wind” and “Iowa Boy” (the latter of which transmitted ugly gossip about Rauhauser’s ex-wife). Rauhauser is obsessed with online secrecy and deception, and has used his various aliases to manipulate both his enemies and allies.
Go read Patrick Read’s 2010 TwitterGate follow-up, “Democrat Cyber Stealth Revealed: Neal Rauhauser & Radical Thugs,” and contemplate how Rauhauser acquired the influence that he used for such purposes.
Study Rauhauser’s history long enough, and you understand that his progressive friends were exploited by Rauhauser for purposes that had very little to do with advancing any legitimate political or policy goals, but had a great deal to do with Rauhauser’s self-aggrandizing effort to make himself a sort of kingpin/hero of the Left.
Rauhauser is ultimately his own worst enemy.
He is rather like the fellow who imagines himself a shrewd poker player but who has a number of “tells” that enable other players to know when he’s bluffing. His habits are deeply engrained and predictable, and his inevitable blunders make Rauhauser perhaps even more dangerous to his allies than he is to his enemies.
In recent days, Rauhauser has committed new blunders, and when his latest errors are revealed, his friends will suffer new embarassments.
— Robert Stacy McCain, Whereabouts Unknown
Update (Smitty): welcome, Instapundit readers. Check out Saturday’s Stephen Kruiser video.
- May 17: Is Democrat Operative Neal Rauhauser an ‘Associate’ of Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin? (And Why It Matters)
- May 17: Convicted Terrorist Brett Kimberlin Received $70,000 From Tides Foundation, $10,000 From Streisand, $20,000 from John Kerry’s Wife
- May 18: Who Warned Us About Brett Kimberlin?
- May 19: Domestic Terrorist Now Using ‘Lawfare’? Convicted Felon Kimberlin’s 501(c)3 Raised $1.8 Million in Six Years UPDATE: ‘Convicted of Perjury’
- May 20: Deadline Loometh, and the Raven Is Croaking Brett Kimberlin’s Name
- May 20: ‘Other Computer Savvy Activists’
- May 21: Never Doubt That God Answers Prayer
- May 22: Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland
- May 23: ‘He Has No F–king Soul’
- May 24: Lying Felon Can’t Stop Lying
- May 25: KimberlinFiles.org
- May 26: Kimberlin v. Walker Hearing Scheduled: 8:30 a.m. Tuesday in Rockville, Maryland
- May 27: Brett Kimberlin’s Heiress Aunt Helping Fund His Tax-Exempt Harassment
- May 27: ERICK ERICKSON GETS SWATTED
- May 28: Somebody Tell Nina Totenberg Her Buddy Brett Kimberlin Is Making News Again
- May 29: Matthew Vadum Talks Brett Kimberlin
- May 29: REPORT: Aaron Walker Arrested After Maryland Hearing on Kimberlin Case UPDATE: Walker Now Released
- May 31: Aaron Walker Court Hearing Confirms Kimberlin-Rauhauser Collaboration
- June 1: Radicals Justify Their Evil by Invoking Their Presumed Moral Superiority
- June 2: When Neal Rauhauser Complained About ‘Menacing’ and ‘Cyberstalking’
- June 3: The Profoundly Dishonest Brett Kimberlin
- June 3: Raw Story Disavows Ties to Kimberlin
- June 3: Inside Neal Rauhauser’s Twisted Mind
- June 4: ‘A Faint Whiff of Vigilante Hysteria’: Weinergate’s Kimberlin Connection
- June 5: Ali Akbar Says, ‘World War Three’
- June 5: Fear and Loathing on Capitol Hill: The GOP Caucus Is Decadent and Depraved
- June 6: Walker Files Appeal in Kimberlin Case; Ali Akbar Says: ‘We’re Not Stopping.’
- June 6: Sen. Saxby Chambliss Requests DOJ Investigate SWATting
- June 7: CNN Gets Scooped on Its Own Story UPDATE: ACLJ Joins the Fight!
- June 8: NATIONAL DAY OF BLOGGER SILENCE UPDATE: Remember Seth Allen
- June 8: @AceOfSpadesHQ BREAKS SILENCE: #BrettKimberlin’s Escalating Threat
- June 10: Brett Kimberlin, Neal Rauhauser, and Their Transparent Empire of Lies UPDATE: ‘Anonymous’ Connection
- June 11: Florida Rep. Sandy Adams Leads 85 House Republicans in ‘SWATting’ Letter
- June 11: #BrettKimberlin Says He Was ‘SWATted’; Why Do Maryland Cops Say Otherwise?
- June 11: HUGE! Neal Rauhauser’s Vicious Lies Exposed by Yet Another Leaked E-Mail
- June 12: ‘Team Kimberlin’ Meltdown Continues
- June 13: A High Time on the Low Road: Smears Target Brett Kimberlin’s Enemies List UPDATE: SWATting Supect ID’d?
- June 13: Time to Ask: What Did Brett Kimberlin Know and When Did He Know It?
- June 14: Patterico: ‘Certain Big Media Reporters Are Scared to Write About Kimberlin’
- June 14: ‘Real Reporter’ @NYT_JenPreston vs. Blogger @Prepostericity (Seth Allen)
- June 14: Neal Rauhauser’s Online Slander Factory
- June 15: Neal Rauhauser’s Game Plan Involving Velvet Revolution and Anonymous
- June 16: Team Kimberlin’s Busted Hustle Now Beginning to Unravel Rapidly UPDATE: Perhaps Not a Coincidence
- June 17: ‘Scrubbed’ Writings Show Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser’s Obsessions
- June 18: The Kimberlin Files: Ali Akbar, the Fight for Liberty and … a Disturbing Silence
- June 19: Neal Rauhauser’s Criminal Complaint Against Blogger Greg W. Howard
- June 19: Neal Rauhauser: Internet Super-Spy!
- June 20: ‘Persona Management’ for Wackjobs: Rauhauser’s Methods of Deception
- June 21: Recording: Leader of Anti-Limbaugh Effort Brags About Obama Campaign Ties
- June 21: ‘Iowa Boy,’ ‘Stranded Wind’ and the Sadistic Personality of Neal Rauhauser
- June 22: E-Mails Expose MSNBC Host’s Involvement in #StopRush Boycott
- June 22: BREAKING: Motion Filed Seeking Federal Injunction on Behalf of Blogger
- June 23: Imani Gandy, #StopRush and Neal Rauhauser: Confirmation and Credibility
- June 23: Neal Rauhauser’s Bizarre Suspicions, and Profiling the (Hypothetical) ‘UnSub’
- June 24: The Silence of Mark Singer; Also: Kimberlin v. Walker Hearing Monday
- June 25: UPDATED: Aaron Walker Granted Emergency Order in Maryland Hearing, Calls Ruling ‘Important Victory’
- June 25: Aaron Walker SWATted?
- June 26: Conspiracy Theorist ‘Qritiq’ Conspires Against Neal Rauhauser’s Targets
- June 26: #TCOT #BrettKimberlin #SWATting Important Event 9:30 p.m. ET Tonight!
- June 27: Professor Glenn ‘Exhibit E’ Reynolds
- June 27: ‘The Gaped Crusader’: Brett Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser Stalked and Taunted SWATting Victim Patrick Frey
- June 29: Convicted Perjurer Brett Kimberlin Has 8:30 a.m. Hearing in Maryland Today
- June 30: UPDATE: Lying Felon Brett Kimberlin Scores a Draw in Maryland Hearing
- July 1: How Stupid I Was: 2011 Edition
- July 1: ‘I Know This All Sounds Crazy, But …’
- July 1: Ten Questions for Brandon Darby
- July 2: Neal Rauhauser’s War on Women
Comments
44 Responses to “A Drawer Full of Sockpuppets: Another Neal Rauhauser ‘Persona’ Exposed”
July 2nd, 2012 @ 2:53 pm
Does anybody atually exist on the left side of the cloud besides Kimberlin and Rauhauser’s crew?
Has anyone asked Congressdrone Johnson what he was doing meeting with an admitted wife-beater with that many outstanding warrants?
July 2nd, 2012 @ 3:13 pm
Be aware, there’s another kind of SWATting going around, where someone hijacks your wifi and uses it to make ‘anonymous’ threats against police, knowing it’ll get traced back to your house:
http://www.courierpress.com/news/2012/jun/22/swat-team-enters-home-people-inside-arent/
If you haven’t already, lock down your local wifi connection; that’s your best defense against this kind of crap.
In other news, Eric Alterman is a jackass that thinks conservatives can’t be journalists or academics– oh wait that’s not news: http://www.thenation.com/article/168622/washington-posts-problem
July 2nd, 2012 @ 3:16 pm
It’s a complicated story, and those are hard to tell, and harder to grasp, but it has to be done. Keep it up. It matters. We’re paying attention, many, many of us.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 3:30 pm
Last week I had someone with a private Twitter account start following me on Twitter. The account name was odd too, a Mexican name and the last name was a Spanish swear word. I immediately thought to myself: is this Neal Rauhauser in yet another guise?
July 2nd, 2012 @ 4:06 pm
Finrod, it’s from the Nation, which sort of begs the question of why you would expect him to think anything else?
July 2nd, 2012 @ 4:07 pm
I wait – with bated breath (because I like being one of the few people I run across who uses the right “bated”) – for the revelation of Rauhauser’s mistakes. I suspect they’re going to be howlers.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 4:08 pm
For a second there I read that as “that would proclaim to the progressive communists at Daily Kos”
July 2nd, 2012 @ 4:50 pm
And the overall meaning changed not a whit.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 5:12 pm
Wait: Alterman actually thinks?
Who knew?
July 2nd, 2012 @ 5:22 pm
It’s so crazy I swear sometimes I think Neal’s trying to set up an insanity defense.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 5:23 pm
Thanks. This is what the tip-jar hitters are paying me to do. I haven’t sent many thank-you e-mails, because I figure they’d rather me just keep on reporting.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 5:55 pm
[…] Scary People Being Crazy and Scary: Rauhauser and Sockpuppets Share this: This entry was posted in News and Links. Bookmark the permalink. ← Gun […]
July 2nd, 2012 @ 6:03 pm
He’d probably be terribly offended if that were proposed. Seriously, reading what he’s written, it’s pretty obvious he thinks he’s a genius, and the bee’s-knees of Open Source Intelligence.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 6:17 pm
At the risk of being identified with those generous people, yeah! Keep writing!
July 2nd, 2012 @ 6:23 pm
We get that these people have a bazillion sockpuppets. Exposing one here or another there is going to cause people’s eyes to glaze over.
We already understand that the “progressive activists” are a group of deceptive, duplicitous, despicable liars. They have been since day one. Deception has been their M.O. ever since the Alar scare on apples back in the 1980’s. Yes, they lie, it’s just what they do, we get that. We don’t expect anything different from them. Unfortunately, unethical political behavior is an American tradition.
What is needed out of this story is not something that is going to cause the conservative choir to cheer, but something that will cause a considerable number of the other side to see exactly how they have been led down the garden path and spoon fed a big steaming pile of hooey.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 6:50 pm
[…] Kimberlin, aka Speedway Bomber, saga, you’re aware of his close associate Neal Rauhauser. Stacy has another piece up today about Rauhauser’s use of “sockpuppets” and his skill at hiding his online […]
July 2nd, 2012 @ 9:05 pm
[…] day, another sockpuppet of His Berserk Majesty, King Rauhauser The Unhinged, exposed, this time by Stacy McCain: FROM AN UNDISCLOSED […]
July 2nd, 2012 @ 9:42 pm
[…] Semper Ignoramus Posted on 2 July, 2012 by wjjhoge Stacy McCain has more on the further misadventures of Neal Rauhauser and his various sockpuppet secret […]
July 2nd, 2012 @ 10:31 pm
Like I said, Neal has committed new blunders, which I am not yet at liberty to discuss. But to address your point: The further demonstration that Rauhauser is a dangerous liability to his friends (which seems to me quite evident already) will serve the purpose of making people think twice before associating with him.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 10:32 pm
His whole Internet Super-Spy act is tedious. It only impresses people who are easily impressed.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 11:47 pm
You can’t pick and choose who you meet with to prevent Guam from tipping over, man!
Besides, if you listen to Johnson for a couple of minutes, you will realize he’s a prime customer for what Kimberlin used to import, IYKWIMAITTYD.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 11:52 pm
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a lunatic is just bat-shi’ite crazy.
This guy actually believes, and launched an all-out no-holds-bar internet crusade (leading into at least very coincidentally the Stack and Patterico attacks) based on the idea that Weiner’s weiner wasn’t Weiner’s, even after Weiner confessed to it.
That takes a pure kind of crazy. It can’t be manufactured.
July 2nd, 2012 @ 11:59 pm
Stories don’t necessarily lead to what is needed from them. They lead where they go. Part of the reason these characters have been able to get away with their misdeeds as long as they have is that rational people find it hard to believe that anyone would expend the kind of effort they do to pursue the zaniest conspiracy theories or seek vengeance for a passing slight.
That, and that there was very little or no attention being paid to them when they did surface from their angry mob of sock puppets to make a threat. The more the spotlight turns on them, the more nervous they get. The more mistakes they make.
It needs to be reported.
July 3rd, 2012 @ 1:06 am
So exactly what is the Stranded Wind Initiative ?
http://www.wiser.org/organization/view/a0809bdc3c45526cad7e7a0480f196b2/section/main
Contact Name:
Neal Rauhauser
Contact Email:
neal [at] strandedwind.org
July 3rd, 2012 @ 1:19 am
Yes, it does, and that probably read worse than I meant it. I guess I meant that he probably has or has had hundreds of fake personae out there, it’s what he does.
July 3rd, 2012 @ 1:30 am
Kos has a big tent, they accommodate progressive communists *and* reactionary communists!
July 3rd, 2012 @ 1:32 am
I think it is closely related to Rauhauser’s Broken Wind initiative.
July 3rd, 2012 @ 1:50 am
How dare you offend such committed grassroots supporters as “Doodad Pro.”
July 3rd, 2012 @ 2:03 am
Then there is Layer 3 Arts
http://www.spoke.com/companies/layer-3-arts-3e122f809e597c10033ad4aa
July 3rd, 2012 @ 2:05 am
Stranded Wind Initiative has a DC phone number
July 3rd, 2012 @ 2:18 am
You’ve seen most of this before …
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/msg/d96ea32ba8ff361e
July 3rd, 2012 @ 2:21 am
There’s the pedosmile again….
July 3rd, 2012 @ 4:04 am
He’s a network engineer. Layer 3 probably refers to the routing of packets in a network, Layer 3 of the OSI model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model#Layer_3:_network_layer
July 3rd, 2012 @ 7:53 am
The address of Layer 3 Arts is a UPS Store
July 3rd, 2012 @ 8:01 am
Or one of his ‘fans’, as it were. Lenin knew he could always could on some of his followers to commit acts independently in emulation of his ones.
July 3rd, 2012 @ 8:03 am
The key thing for this 21st Century Schizoid Man – and this is all that matters to him – he’s impressing himself.
July 3rd, 2012 @ 8:05 am
Weiner’s weiner was so bare
Weiner’s weiner had no hair
Weiner’s weiner wasn’t big, was it?
July 3rd, 2012 @ 8:11 am
I believe it was Stacy who reported on this, but, as I recall, SWI has something to do with energy. However, it may be a scam set-up to launder money or it’s just one of the many projects developed in Neal’s mind during one of his manic phases that he actually sought to carry out.
July 3rd, 2012 @ 9:38 am
[…] Let's just dive in, beginning with this round up by Tai Chi Policy. The Lonely Conservative relays the information from Screed of Momus that Dem House candidate Darcy Burner has been availing herself of Neal Rauhauser's peculiar services. Bob Belvedere mentions us in a gathering of posts advocating that we stop the infighting, including Momus, again, and Liberty Chick. Stacy revisits and elaborates on the sockpuppeting of real boy wannabe Neal Rauhauser. […]
July 3rd, 2012 @ 10:02 am
[…] me — the Club is preparing to counterattack.At the end of a post yesterday, I gave you a tiny hint of what’s coming, and will soon be able to tell you more. For now, I urge you to contribute […]
July 3rd, 2012 @ 12:13 pm
Not all that unusual for network engineers. Many people who do networking stuff will do work on the side. My guess is that this would be a consulting practice he set up or attempted to start for the purpose of doing project work.
For example, some little company can’t justify having a network engineer on full-time staff so they consult with an outside contractor as needed. That isn’t unusual in that line of work.
July 3rd, 2012 @ 1:05 pm
I get baited breath when I go out for sushi. Yum!
July 3rd, 2012 @ 1:09 pm
My poor kids…they googled their father. It is so hard to explain mental illness and abandonment. But would you want him in your child’s life?
July 16th, 2012 @ 11:00 am
[…] Neal Rauhauser sock puppet […]