The Strange Pairing of Brett Kimberlin and Become.com

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(Note: Very special thanks to Dan for allowing me this space to post while I change hosting providers).

A lot can happen in two weeks, and in terms of press cycles it can be an eternity. More so when one awaits a response from commercial entities and government agencies where a response -if any- needs be filtered from one level of an organization to another and back again ad infinitum.

Two weeks ago I became more interested in the Brett Kimberlin connection to other parties as questions of his financial backers arose. Naturally political parties and organizations come to mind when dealing with policy charged intimidation, and a slew of background material has been unearthed by the capable hands of Patterico, Robert Stacy McCain, Mandy Nagy and others who have had (in these cases) first-hand experience. Certainly Aaron Walker would say more if he wasn't under an unconstitutional gag order.

Figuring that no one operates in a vacuum, I began to look at other associations of the commercial variety. One search yielded an interesting result. A common web tool on the 'net is a reverse DNS lookup. Using one of Brett Kimberlin's web domains as a starting point, I uncovered the list of web sites sharing the same IP address of 208.109.95.2 (sorry if this is a little over technical, inside-baseball for some readers) which are generally to be considered sharing one account depending on webhosting company. A veritable rat's nest of Kimberlin-maintained political sites cropped up, including velvetrevolution.us, indictbreitbart.org, kochwatch.org and others- really what one would expect from Kimberlin and his friends.

But one stood out from the list, that of Become.com. Seeing as a single word dictionary domain like this is a valuable property, I began to look into it.

Become.com is an online retailer using XML/RSS feeds to catalog and index products from other retailers on the web and offer ?best pricing? tools. Founded and developed by a host of big name internet entrepreneurs (Yahoo!, NexTag, eBay, MySimon), Become.com sticks out on an otherwise personal hosting account of a political hack, and worse on the account of a convicted bomber.

Why on earth would a legitimate business, and a fairly sized one at that, host their American website operations on the account of a man with a disturbing felony rapsheet?

In an effort to find out more about this, I wrote to the press email account of Become.com on May 25^th and waited. The following is a copy of that letter, email addresses removed.
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Hello Gentlemen,

I am writing to you today because of some recent press garnered by the assertions of different political bloggers, pundits and journalists in recent days regarding threats of violence against certain individuals. How this pertains to Become.com will become apparent shortly.

National news personalities Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and others have reported that an individual by the name of Brett Kimberlin and possibly certain associates have been running on a campaign of silencing conservative bloggers and journalists for reporting on Kimberlin's past as a bomber (known as the Speedway Bomber in the late 70s, and was sentenced to 50 years in prison. He has since been released and became a "jailhouse lawyer" and has embarked upon a campaign of numerous civil complaints and even further threats of violence).

Some background on Kimberlin can be found here:

http://theothermccain.com/2012/05/24/lying-felon-cant-stop-lying/

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/05/23/free-speech-show-solidarity-for-targeted-conservative-bloggers/

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/readymeet-soros-funded-domestic-terrorist-brett-kimberlin-whose-job-is-terrorizing-bloggers-into-silence/

http://patterico.com/2012/05/25/convicted-bomber-brett-kimberlin-neal-rauhauser-ron-brynaert-and-their-campaign-of-political-terrorism/

In doing some background research into other areas of Kimberlin's, I discovered the inventory of his webhost server. Among all of the rough dozen or so political websites Mr. Kimberlin has placed upon his server, there is only one commercial site on it: Become.com (as well as Exava.com, apparently a Become.com sub-property).

This can be verified by performing a reverse IP lookup, for instance- going to an online tool like http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/ and running a search on op-critical.com, one of Mr. Kimberlin's web properties.

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Site list:

become.com

campaignaccountabilitywatch.org

exava.com

indictbreitbart.org

issaoversight.org

jtmp.org

op-critical.com

protectourelections.org

www.americancrossroadswatch.org

www.huntonandwilliamswatch.org

www.kochwatch.org

www.occupyforaccountability.org

www.op-critical.com

www.prosecutenewscorp.com

www.velvetrevolution.us

I would like to know what business relationship you have with Mr. Kimberlin, and who within your organization is responsible for the logistics of hosting the site for your American consumers. It does seem odd that a reputable site like Become.com would "stick out," as it were, on the hosting plan of a convicted terrorist.

Any information you might have on this strangeness would be very appreciated.

I wish to point out that I have every belief that this situation is wholly unknown of by the management and directors of Beyond.com [sic- I meant Become.com, but erred /Flynn], nor do I believe that there is anything 'nefarious' with your business endeavors. I simply find it unusual when one commercial entity springs up in a list of extremist websites.

Yours very sincerely,

S. Flynn

Flynn@[redacted]

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After waiting a period of days, I re-sent them a letter nearly identical to this, but with the forward suggesting that perhaps they were unable to get back to me due to the Memorial Day holiday and unavailability of certain staff. Also, a casual online associate of mine also forwarded a copy of my first letter to a principal of the business through a LinkedIn contact. We haven't received any reply.

In the intervening time I would have assumed that one of two things would have occurred: that either I would get a reply, or I would note that the Become.com website to have moved it's hosting operations to another provider. As of this morning nothing has changed, so it can only be assumed that contractual or other obligations keep Become.com associated with Kimberlin, or indeed the site wants to remain there. With several attempts at communication through different routes, it beggars belief that they are not aware of the situation.

Having much experience in enterprise web operations, certainly they are aware of what hosting service infrastructure supports their business. In my opinion it would be catastrophic negligence for an online business to be unaware of? their contractors, especially considering the curriculum vitae of the core Become.com founders and principals.

Follow Flynn on Twitter: @FlynnsTake

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