Last night, I posted of Rusty Shackleford’s coming under simultaneous assault from the Islamists and the Indian government. This morning, I learn that lefty blogger extraordinaire Glenn Greenwald–who is a famous constitutional scholar, has a bestselling book, is quoted by important Senators and media types alike, and has risen to the heights of blogitude in a mere nine months–has had his IP address stolen by at least three people. Thankfully, they have so far used it only to write blog comments praising Greenwald. But, surely, this could be used for ill, too.
Shawn, Patrick Frey, and Ace all have details.
UPDATE (Greg Tinti): More from Byran Preston at Hot Air, who quips, “Perhaps Mr. Greenwald just lives in a crowded house where everyone just happens to spend a lot of time on the internet praising Greenwald using very similar language. And they’re all deeply familiar with Greenwald’s career. Yeah, that must be it.”
UPDATE (Greg Tinti): Dan Riehl has found several comments on his blog from Greenwald’s “stolen” IP address as well.
UPDATE (Greg Tinti): Greenwald responds:
A new accusation is that I’ve been engaging in so-called “sock puppetry” by leaving comments in response to posts that attack me under other names., i.e., that I use multiple names to comment and the same comment was left at several blogs by the same IP address under different names.
Not frequently, I leave comments at blogs which criticize or respond to something I have written. I always, in every single instance, use my own name when doing so. I have never left a single comment at any other blog using any name other than my own, at least not since I began blogging. IP addresses signify the Internet account one uses, not any one individual. Those in the same household have the same IP address. In response to the personal attacks that have been oozing forth these last couple of weeks, others have left comments responding to them and correcting the factual inaccuracies, as have I. In each case when I did, I have used my own name.
UPDATE (Greg Tinti): For posperity’s sake, I took the liberty of emailing all the addresses used by the IP thief at all the sites in play so far. Here are the returns:
“Ellison” commenting at Ace Of Spades HQ:
“Thomas Ellers” commenting at QandO:
“Sam Matthews” commenting at The Riehl World:
“Ryan” commenting at The Riehl World:
But as for “Wilson” who commented at Goldstein’s site, I have received no rejection notice yet.
Perhaps the villian will respond shortly…
UPDATE (James Joyner): Greenwald‘s response is matter-of-fact enough in his denial of “sockpuppetry” although rather vague in terms of who precisely would be using Greenwald’s Internet connection to post comments under multiple names. Steven Taylor believes the jealous Brazilian lover theory the most likely explanation.
UPDATE (James Joyner): Kevin Aylward, who knows a heap more about this sort of thing than most, thinks the explanation is technical rather than nefarious:
My best guess is that Greenwald has a Wi-Fi enabled laptop and moves around the country on occasion, and the IP address published supposedly belonging to Glenn is the one assigned via DHCP to the wireless router in the house he stays at in Brazil. As with any setup like that the same address is shared by all computers behind the router, and on when the router is rebooted the ISP may (or may not) assign a different IP address to the router.
He also shares Taylor’s view that the Greenwald’s Brazilian partner is the likely “sock puppet.” Absent significant evidence to the contrary, this strikes me as the most plausible explanation, too.
