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ARTelevision · 05-12-2003, 07:23 AM

Loner's rage burned after ruin of Web site

05/11/03

from the Cleveland Plain Dealer

Biswanath Halder's Web site was his life. Working at least eight hours a day year-round in the Case Western Reserve University computer lab, he painstakingly compiled the digital equivalent of a bulging file cabinet and hope chest, stuffed with business plans and pleas for social justice.

Then, three years ago, a prankster hacked into his computer and erased it all. "Everything I had was destroyed," he said. Halder's outrage turned into a blizzard of complaints, from the courts to the FBI and Capitol Hill. He blamed the university and a computer lab assistant named Shawn Miller - "the evil man," as Halder called him.

Halder sued Miller, but a judge dismissed the case. Two weeks ago, an appeals court refused to review it. On Friday, police say, the 62-year-old Calcutta, India, native stalked through Miller's workplace at the CWRU business school, firing a pistol and a machine gun in a seven-hour standoff that ended with one dead and three people, including Halder, wounded.

Police believe Halder's grievance with the school inspired the shooting.

Miller, 38, who was in the Lewis Building on Friday, never got a good look at the shooter, but said yesterday that "about the third or fourth hour, I started to wonder, 'Oh, wow, gee, what if it was him?' "

Court records, interviews and Halder's writings show that the bachelor led a life of awkward isolation while creating an Internet persona of a budding millionaire and social activist, even a savior of the world. There were plenty of contradictions.

He bragged in a deposition from his lawsuit against Miller that his Web-based business plan would "have an impact of billions of dollars a year on mankind," though Halder himself was borrowing from one credit card to pay off another.

He posted an Internet resume seeking jobs as an engineer, yet had sued many potential employers for not hiring him. He has not held a job since at least 1990, instead devoting himself "365 days a year" to establishing a vague "electronic network" of enterprising Indians - a venture he blamed Miller for destroying.

"In a few seconds, the evil man wiped out everything that it took my lifetime to create," Halder said in an e-mail sent to the entire Weatherhead School of Management in August 2000. "Now, the evil man is on his evil path to destroy Weatherhead."

According to his resume, Halder served in the Indian army and received a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Calcutta. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1969 and became a U.S. citizen 11 years later. He lived in New York, Boston and Maryland before moving to Cleveland about 1996.

During the 1970s, he filed numerous unsuccessful discrimination and civil rights cases against big companies like NCR and Sperry Rand, who he said refused to hire him. He said the companies paid off the judges to defeat him.

In his resume, Halder claims he worked as a stockbroker and a real-estate salesman, though in a July 2002 deposition Halder said his last job was as a contract employee for IBM in the late 1980s. At about the same time, he said he began collecting Social Security for various disabilities, including an injured hip and wrist, elbow problems and glaucoma. He underwent psychological tests, but when pressed by Miller's lawyer, he said that had nothing to do with his $600-a-month government check.

Halder received a master's in business administration from CWRU in 1999, but continued to take classes sporadically, apparently to maintain his privileges in the computer lab.

Neighbors within sight of his third-floor housetop apartment in Little Italy, with its front windows covered with aluminum foil, describe a classic loner who rarely spoke and walked down the middle of Coltman Road pulling a grocery cart filled with books.

Halder himself said he tried "to avoid everybody. I do not talk to anybody unless I have to."

"I never really had a lengthy conversation with him," said Jared Oakes, a CWRU law school student who lived in the apartment downstairs. "He'd say, 'Do you have clothes in the dryer?' "

Halder's problems at CWRU began in June 2000, when a visitor to his Web site left a mocking message: "Bizzy Halder is a moron. This guy makes a living out of creeping people out. From his fake hair, to his fake teeth, his whitey tighty shorts and pants. . . . this guy is LOON."

A month later, someone Halder described as a hacker deleted his Web site files. Halder was convinced the culprit was Shawn Miller. He first complained to CWRU's administration, then to the University Circle police.

When they didn't respond, he went to the Cleveland police, the FBI, and even named Miller in letters to the Senate and House judiciary committees.

Miller has denied doing anything to Halder's computer files. Miller's lawyer argued that Halder focused on Miller because the lab assistant told Halder his computer privileges were suspended.

In fact, Halder's computer access was taken away more than once. In 1999, the university shut down his computer account for upsetting a female lab worker, records show. And in November 2001, an associate dean said Halder "harassed and disrupted other users" in the computer lab.

Halder aspired to use his Web site to promote social good as well as to make money. "I try to solve mankind's problems through the Internet," he said in his deposition.

"He's a very vocal social activist," said Durga Choudhury, a New Hampshire engineer who designed a portion of Halder's Web site when both men lived in Boston in the 1990s. "He speaks up for depressed people all over. He was opposing the war in Iraq, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India."

The loss of the Web site, and his intensifying anger toward CWRU, derailed whatever plans Halder had.

He spent the rest of that year rebuilding his computer files, finding a lawyer and obsessing about Miller.

"If the unholy trio of an incompetent police department, a perfect idiot mayor, and a felon clerk of the council continue to rule Cleveland, very dark days are ahead for Clevelanders," Halder wrote to then-Mayor Michael White in 2001 after the police wouldn't respond to his complaints about Miller.

As more time passed, his warnings became more dire. In a July 2002 letter to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Sutula, who was overseeing the Miller lawsuit, Halder wrote:

"The end result of all of these outright evil actions will be that society will end up paying a severe price."

.................................................................

In case (western) you missed the story, here's the details:

.................................................................

Case Western Shooting Suspect Identified
NewsMax Wires
Sunday, May 11, 2003

CLEVELAND -- The suspected gunman, who shot and killed one person and wounded another at Case Western Reserve University, was identified Saturday as 62-year-old Biswanath Haldr.
Police said Haldr was a former student and employee who filed a suit against the university a couple of years ago. He lost the suit and the appeal.

Haldr was being treated for a bullet wound in the stomach, police said. He was taken into custody late Friday after SWAT teams brought the bizarre seven-hour drama to an end.

"We are incredibly saddened that this kind of thing should happen in any setting," University President Edward Hundert said.

"A university should be a place where people come to grow and try to become themselves more fully and serve in the community and learn," said Hundert. "This kind of incident is antithetical to the kind of experiences that we would hope would happen on our nation's university campuses."

The incident began around 4:00 p.m. Friday when according to witnesses, who spoke to WKYC-TV, Haldr wearing military fatigues and a helmet broke through a glass door with a sledgehammer and entered the modernistic $62 million Peter B. Lewis building.

One of the victims was shot outside and taken to a hospital. The other victim was shot inside the building and died later at University Hospital. The coroner identified the person killed as 30-year-old Norman Wallace. No other information was immediately available.

Taking Refuge

But many people were apparently saved by being able to take refuge in the many shielded spaces afforded by the building's unusual architecture, keeping in touch with those outside by cell phone and even e-mail.

People inside told of hiding beneath desks as the intruder went from room to room.

Friday night Cleveland Police Chief Edward Lohn said several people were injured as police officers rescued them, with 60 people placed under guard for a time at one location inside.

"He looked like he was an older individual," Chief Lohn said. "No one knows what is the mind of someone else who commits these terrible acts. I feel for the families of the people who were injured."

The suspect, he said, was an individual who appeared to have been out of school for some time. Police officers said the shooter appeared to be a black man in his 40s or 50s.

After a standoff that lasted for several hours SWAT teams entered the Lewis building and several others nearby with weapons drawn. Three people, including a pregnant woman, were rescued shortly after.

"The cooperation among the different agencies made this possible," Chief Lohn said. "I think we all should be thankful that we do work so well together and trained so well so that this was put to an end quickly with very few unfortunate acts."

Far fewer students than usual were inside the building because the university calendar was in the period of final exams.

Case Western is located in University Circle, a usually quiet 550-acre concentration of approximately 50 cultural, medical, educational, religious, and social service institutions located just east of downtown Cleveland.

The school has a total enrollment of 9,530 students. The shooting happened about a week before 2,000 students are expected to graduate on May 18.

.................................

Things like this remind me that anger and rage need to be kept under control. We all have reactions when our personal efforts are rendered worthless. You won't see me affirming anger or rage in any context, anywhere. You give it an inch and it takes a mile.

rogue49 · 05-12-2003, 07:50 AM

hmm...it's always the quiet ones.

Anyone, see the movie "Anger Management" yet?

Prophecy · 05-12-2003, 08:00 AM

That's some serious obession. It also sounds like the man wasn't all there in the first place. Though that doesn't excuse his actions...

troit · 05-12-2003, 08:01 AM

Incredibly powerful stuff. Unfortuantely some people cannot control as well as others.

Boner · 05-12-2003, 08:04 AM

Note to self: If I ever create a world-changing website, make backups.

shalafi · 05-12-2003, 08:18 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Boner
Note to self: If I ever create a world-changing website, make backups.

thats what im wondering about. hes got years of work into this thing and no backups???

ARTelevision · 05-12-2003, 08:34 AM

yeah, if he could have accepted that fact, he could have just shot himself. so instead, because he forgot to make backups he shot other people.

...a real psycho/sociopath...blame everyone and everything else and don't notice your own fuck ups.

maximusveritas · 05-12-2003, 10:10 AM

I always tell people: You'd have to be crazy not to make a backup.
This confirms it.

hrdwareguy · 05-12-2003, 10:52 AM

I was wondering about the backups myself.

Boner · 05-12-2003, 09:00 PM

It looks like he was just using an account at his ISP. I'd be suprised (but not shocked) if the ISP wasn't backing up that webserver on their end. I know at the ISPs I've been at we backed up EVERYTHING.

I wonder if he even checked with them...

Reese · 05-13-2003, 04:57 AM

You gotta be crazy to not backup! oh wait.. he is crazy. If should have been in the looney bin a long time ago.

05-12-2003, 07:23 AM	#1 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	Wack Webmaster Was Case Western Wildman Loner's rage burned after ruin of Web site 05/11/03 from the Cleveland Plain Dealer Biswanath Halder's Web site was his life. Working at least eight hours a day year-round in the Case Western Reserve University computer lab, he painstakingly compiled the digital equivalent of a bulging file cabinet and hope chest, stuffed with business plans and pleas for social justice. Then, three years ago, a prankster hacked into his computer and erased it all. "Everything I had was destroyed," he said. Halder's outrage turned into a blizzard of complaints, from the courts to the FBI and Capitol Hill. He blamed the university and a computer lab assistant named Shawn Miller - "the evil man," as Halder called him. Halder sued Miller, but a judge dismissed the case. Two weeks ago, an appeals court refused to review it. On Friday, police say, the 62-year-old Calcutta, India, native stalked through Miller's workplace at the CWRU business school, firing a pistol and a machine gun in a seven-hour standoff that ended with one dead and three people, including Halder, wounded. Police believe Halder's grievance with the school inspired the shooting. Miller, 38, who was in the Lewis Building on Friday, never got a good look at the shooter, but said yesterday that "about the third or fourth hour, I started to wonder, 'Oh, wow, gee, what if it was him?' " Court records, interviews and Halder's writings show that the bachelor led a life of awkward isolation while creating an Internet persona of a budding millionaire and social activist, even a savior of the world. There were plenty of contradictions. He bragged in a deposition from his lawsuit against Miller that his Web-based business plan would "have an impact of billions of dollars a year on mankind," though Halder himself was borrowing from one credit card to pay off another. He posted an Internet resume seeking jobs as an engineer, yet had sued many potential employers for not hiring him. He has not held a job since at least 1990, instead devoting himself "365 days a year" to establishing a vague "electronic network" of enterprising Indians - a venture he blamed Miller for destroying. "In a few seconds, the evil man wiped out everything that it took my lifetime to create," Halder said in an e-mail sent to the entire Weatherhead School of Management in August 2000. "Now, the evil man is on his evil path to destroy Weatherhead." According to his resume, Halder served in the Indian army and received a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Calcutta. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1969 and became a U.S. citizen 11 years later. He lived in New York, Boston and Maryland before moving to Cleveland about 1996. During the 1970s, he filed numerous unsuccessful discrimination and civil rights cases against big companies like NCR and Sperry Rand, who he said refused to hire him. He said the companies paid off the judges to defeat him. In his resume, Halder claims he worked as a stockbroker and a real-estate salesman, though in a July 2002 deposition Halder said his last job was as a contract employee for IBM in the late 1980s. At about the same time, he said he began collecting Social Security for various disabilities, including an injured hip and wrist, elbow problems and glaucoma. He underwent psychological tests, but when pressed by Miller's lawyer, he said that had nothing to do with his $600-a-month government check. Halder received a master's in business administration from CWRU in 1999, but continued to take classes sporadically, apparently to maintain his privileges in the computer lab. Neighbors within sight of his third-floor housetop apartment in Little Italy, with its front windows covered with aluminum foil, describe a classic loner who rarely spoke and walked down the middle of Coltman Road pulling a grocery cart filled with books. Halder himself said he tried "to avoid everybody. I do not talk to anybody unless I have to." "I never really had a lengthy conversation with him," said Jared Oakes, a CWRU law school student who lived in the apartment downstairs. "He'd say, 'Do you have clothes in the dryer?' " Halder's problems at CWRU began in June 2000, when a visitor to his Web site left a mocking message: "Bizzy Halder is a moron. This guy makes a living out of creeping people out. From his fake hair, to his fake teeth, his whitey tighty shorts and pants. . . . this guy is LOON." A month later, someone Halder described as a hacker deleted his Web site files. Halder was convinced the culprit was Shawn Miller. He first complained to CWRU's administration, then to the University Circle police. When they didn't respond, he went to the Cleveland police, the FBI, and even named Miller in letters to the Senate and House judiciary committees. Miller has denied doing anything to Halder's computer files. Miller's lawyer argued that Halder focused on Miller because the lab assistant told Halder his computer privileges were suspended. In fact, Halder's computer access was taken away more than once. In 1999, the university shut down his computer account for upsetting a female lab worker, records show. And in November 2001, an associate dean said Halder "harassed and disrupted other users" in the computer lab. Halder aspired to use his Web site to promote social good as well as to make money. "I try to solve mankind's problems through the Internet," he said in his deposition. "He's a very vocal social activist," said Durga Choudhury, a New Hampshire engineer who designed a portion of Halder's Web site when both men lived in Boston in the 1990s. "He speaks up for depressed people all over. He was opposing the war in Iraq, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in India." The loss of the Web site, and his intensifying anger toward CWRU, derailed whatever plans Halder had. He spent the rest of that year rebuilding his computer files, finding a lawyer and obsessing about Miller. "If the unholy trio of an incompetent police department, a perfect idiot mayor, and a felon clerk of the council continue to rule Cleveland, very dark days are ahead for Clevelanders," Halder wrote to then-Mayor Michael White in 2001 after the police wouldn't respond to his complaints about Miller. As more time passed, his warnings became more dire. In a July 2002 letter to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Sutula, who was overseeing the Miller lawsuit, Halder wrote: "The end result of all of these outright evil actions will be that society will end up paying a severe price." ................................................................. In case (western) you missed the story, here's the details: ................................................................. Case Western Shooting Suspect Identified NewsMax Wires Sunday, May 11, 2003 CLEVELAND -- The suspected gunman, who shot and killed one person and wounded another at Case Western Reserve University, was identified Saturday as 62-year-old Biswanath Haldr. Police said Haldr was a former student and employee who filed a suit against the university a couple of years ago. He lost the suit and the appeal. Haldr was being treated for a bullet wound in the stomach, police said. He was taken into custody late Friday after SWAT teams brought the bizarre seven-hour drama to an end. "We are incredibly saddened that this kind of thing should happen in any setting," University President Edward Hundert said. "A university should be a place where people come to grow and try to become themselves more fully and serve in the community and learn," said Hundert. "This kind of incident is antithetical to the kind of experiences that we would hope would happen on our nation's university campuses." The incident began around 4:00 p.m. Friday when according to witnesses, who spoke to WKYC-TV, Haldr wearing military fatigues and a helmet broke through a glass door with a sledgehammer and entered the modernistic $62 million Peter B. Lewis building. One of the victims was shot outside and taken to a hospital. The other victim was shot inside the building and died later at University Hospital. The coroner identified the person killed as 30-year-old Norman Wallace. No other information was immediately available. Taking Refuge But many people were apparently saved by being able to take refuge in the many shielded spaces afforded by the building's unusual architecture, keeping in touch with those outside by cell phone and even e-mail. People inside told of hiding beneath desks as the intruder went from room to room. Friday night Cleveland Police Chief Edward Lohn said several people were injured as police officers rescued them, with 60 people placed under guard for a time at one location inside. "He looked like he was an older individual," Chief Lohn said. "No one knows what is the mind of someone else who commits these terrible acts. I feel for the families of the people who were injured." The suspect, he said, was an individual who appeared to have been out of school for some time. Police officers said the shooter appeared to be a black man in his 40s or 50s. After a standoff that lasted for several hours SWAT teams entered the Lewis building and several others nearby with weapons drawn. Three people, including a pregnant woman, were rescued shortly after. "The cooperation among the different agencies made this possible," Chief Lohn said. "I think we all should be thankful that we do work so well together and trained so well so that this was put to an end quickly with very few unfortunate acts." Far fewer students than usual were inside the building because the university calendar was in the period of final exams. Case Western is located in University Circle, a usually quiet 550-acre concentration of approximately 50 cultural, medical, educational, religious, and social service institutions located just east of downtown Cleveland. The school has a total enrollment of 9,530 students. The shooting happened about a week before 2,000 students are expected to graduate on May 18. ................................. Things like this remind me that anger and rage need to be kept under control. We all have reactions when our personal efforts are rendered worthless. You won't see me affirming anger or rage in any context, anywhere. You give it an inch and it takes a mile. __________________ create evolution

05-12-2003, 08:00 AM	#3 (permalink)
Prophecy Oracle & Apollyon Location: Limbus Patrum	That's some serious obession. It also sounds like the man wasn't all there in the first place. Though that doesn't excuse his actions... __________________ La Disciplina È La Mia Spada, La Fede È Il Mio Schermo, Non salti Ciecamente In Incertezza, E Potete Raccogliere Le Ricompense.

05-12-2003, 08:01 AM	#4 (permalink)
troit Transfer Agent Location: NYC	Incredibly powerful stuff. Unfortuantely some people cannot control as well as others. __________________ I've yet to dephile myself...

05-12-2003, 08:34 AM	#7 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	yeah, if he could have accepted that fact, he could have just shot himself. so instead, because he forgot to make backups he shot other people. ...a real psycho/sociopath...blame everyone and everything else and don't notice your own fuck ups. __________________ create evolution

05-12-2003, 10:52 AM	#9 (permalink)
hrdwareguy "Officer, I was in fear for my life" Location: Oklahoma City	I was wondering about the backups myself. __________________ Gun Control is hitting what you aim at Aim for the TFP, Donate Today

05-12-2003, 07:50 AM	#2 (permalink)
rogue49 Loser	hmm...it's always the quiet ones. Anyone, see the movie "Anger Management" yet?

05-12-2003, 08:04 AM	#5 (permalink)
Boner Insane Location: Plugged In	Note to self: If I ever create a world-changing website, make backups.

05-12-2003, 10:10 AM	#8 (permalink)
maximusveritas Winner	I always tell people: You'd have to be crazy not to make a backup. This confirms it.

05-12-2003, 09:00 PM	#10 (permalink)
Boner Insane Location: Plugged In	It looks like he was just using an account at his ISP. I'd be suprised (but not shocked) if the ISP wasn't backing up that webserver on their end. I know at the ISPs I've been at we backed up EVERYTHING. I wonder if he even checked with them...

05-13-2003, 04:57 AM	#11 (permalink)
Reese Delicious	You gotta be crazy to not backup! oh wait.. he is crazy. If should have been in the looney bin a long time ago. __________________ “It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick” - Dave Barry