Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Burglary in the Senate
earthworm2 writes "The Boston Globe is reporting that Republicans on the Senate judiciary committee have spied on confidential Democratic files for a year, studying their strategies and passing on the juicy bits to the media."
Microsoft backs the Republicans.
Microsoft shares exploit with the Republicans.
Democrats get sodomized.
Fuhrer Bush and Reichstag Security Head Ashcroft smile.
You KNOW it's true because it's on slashdot!
That's why I'm a... damn!
W@tergate ??
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
So I misread that as "Electronic Buggery in the Senate".
If the files were supposed to be confidential, shouldn't they have been protected?
And if the Republicans are hackers doesn't that mean we should be supporting them??
Since information wants to be free and all.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Let's see how they like "terrorism" charges brought aginst themselvs.
After all, the Democrats were against the war, and thusly terrorist sympathizers!
We are exactly 20 years off on our calendar.
Trespassing? Perhaps. Spying? That's a stretch. But BURGLARY?? This looks more to me like Michael once again using inflammatory headlines to push his well-known anti-Republican agenda on the readers of Slashdot.
Mod me down if you don't like what I'm suggesting, but really folks, think about it for a minute.
"A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password."
This is actually scary news for Americans!
DrkBr
As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem.
... they get caught with both hands in the honey pot.
While it sounds like the Dems' tech guy is missing his distro of Clue, I wonder... what if he/she left the backdoor open on purpose?
Here's a scenario:
1. Repo tech tells Demo tech about security problem.
2. Demo tech realizes that any security breach could bite the Repos in the butt if discovered.
3. Optional: Tech tells Demo leadership about the plan.
4. Demo tech keeps an eye on traffic through the breach, letting the Repos pull info until...
5.
Step 3 is optional because it assumes cluefulness on the part of political leadership, which I wouldn't want to assume. But there are some tech-savvy members of Congress (surely!) who might understand the honeypot concept.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
In DC, this is called `Business As Usual`.
Skip from this incident of Republicans spying back to the years during the Clinton White House, wherein the FBI was found to have pulled confidential files on tons of prominent Republicans and provided that information (quite illegally).
Quick link to info on Filegate
Quick summary for people who don't remember 1998: "[There was a] class action suit on behalf of the more than 900 Bush and Reagan appointees and possibly others whose FBI files were unlawfully obtained by the Clinton White House. Louis Freeh, Director of the FBI, has admitted that there was an "egregious violation of privacy without justification."
It goes around, it comes around, Watergate wasn't the first time, and this isn't the last time.
Politics.
feh.
In the US, however, doesn't this make them terrorists and entitled to a free, one way, all expenses paid trip to Cuba?
Further investigation reveals that the Democrats were using Usenet for their correspondence.
Best Windows Freeware
They should have used Digital Rights Management:
Ideological opponents: ( ) Allow (+) Deny
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Stop spoiling my well-ingrained stereotype of republicans as slack-jawed rednecks who couldn't crack into a nut, let alone a computer! How can this be? :)
These sigs are more interesting tha
Preach one thing, practise another!
Tell everyone that you're all for fair play, an even playing field for everyone but then read other people's confidential memos to gain an unfair advantage. How sleazy is that?
I wonder what Republicans who thought Bill Clinton getting a blowjob was worthy of impeachment have to say about Senators and their staffs committing crimes punishable by up to a year in prison?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
they are all corrupt.
Interesting how we are supposed to trust a government that doesn't trust itself, eh?
Gah. I'm moving to Emland. It's a small island off the coast of your imagination. Right next to the Citgo, across the street from the Chinese takeout/wireless internet cafe/pizzaria/gas station/home depot/Publix.
Bah.
Sent from your iPad.
I don't remember anyone going to jail when Clinton illegally pulled the FBI records of some 500+ Republicians...
Not that it makes this right, but let's face it, since Watergate this kind of stuff has been happening with both sides and nobody has been punished yet.
Finkployd
That's about all the article says about the "glitch" that occurred, presumably due to human error. At first I thought the account was probably M$ Windows related, since it is would be harder with Linux/UNIX to "accidentally" create accounts which were accessible to anybody.
But then, the technician could have done anything stupid like assigning the easily guessable password across to all accounts. Or who knows, maybe they were using a database system or other software which created accounts on top of the OS.
A little more information about the OS/software in use would certainly shed more light on who was actually responsible for the glitch...instead of blaming it outright on the technician.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake
That wasn't a computer malfunction. The computer and the software worked exactly like the way they were supposed to work.
Thou Shalt not be suprised when the documents saved in a public share show up the the Wall Street Journal.
This story is appalling, but also ancient. Let's
bring it back out closer to election time, though,
when it is again relevant.
> Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary
> Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year,
> monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically
> passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The
> Globe.
> Novak is also at the center of an investigation into who
> leaked the identity of a CIA agent whose husband
> contradicted a Bush administration claim about Iraqi
> nuclear programs.
So, Novak leaks the name of a CIA operator for political gain to hide the fact that Bush lied about Iraq trying to buy uranium for nuclear weapons. Then he blows the cover of a CIA front operation to further his story. Why isn't this guy in jail?
More importantly, some Republicans keep doing crazy stuff like this. We still don't know which "senior Bush official" leaked the info to Novak, and Bush seems uninterested to find out who committed this crime. The Republicans have been desperate to bury Watergate's effect on their image, but stuff like makes it alive and well.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Let's assume for a moment that Senators and/or their staffers were illegally accessing systems that they were not supposed to be gaining entry to.
Using the same Draconian laws that they themselves enacted, these people could end up serving hard time for their deeds, losing their rights to privacy, vote and carry a gun. That and losing their jobs and pensions, not to mention medical benefits, etc. In other words, as felons, they become no-ones.
That to me, is the definition of irony.
"Green? Libertarian? Reform? Independent?
Power corrupts."
And PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
You got'a love it! when anyone else looks at files they should not be looking at, it is "criminal hacking" when they look at the same stuff it is called "glitch" :)))
Louis Freeh, the source that you're quoting authoritatively, is also the FBI Director who misallocated funds and agents to investigate Clinton's WhiteWater scandals.
In case you weren't familiar with those, the WhiteWater scandals were shown to be completely baseless. As a matter of fact, several independent government agencies acquitted the Clintons of wrongdoing from the very beginning. Despite this, Freeh continuned to play up to his Republican buddies in Congress.
While we're meditating on this era, let's remember the outrageous scandals that neo-conservatives used to ruin a great presidency.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Though honestly, I'd like to know what this "glitch" is. Sounds like someone had a rootkit, and the tech didn't patch windows.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
A technician hired by the new judiciary chairman, Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, apparently made a mistake that allowed anyone to access newly created accounts on a Judiciary Committee server shared by both parties -- even though the accounts were supposed to restrict access only to those with the right password.
Does this mean the party that controls the senate gets to hire the technician who manages the servers? Am i the only one who sees a problem with that?
It strikes me as ironic (in the scary, not-very-funny-at-all sense) that it's the judiciary committee that got caught breaking the law, violating ethics, and spying on their counterparts.
We're supposed to trust these people with judicial nominees?
By want, I assume that you meant took. Maybe yes, maybe no.
But when you competitor does, it's pretty clear that it's theft.
Sigs are bad for your health.
This is the political equivalent of an insider trading scandal or other form of corporate crime. Those who care about the law want it to be prosecuted to its full extent. However, everyday people look at corporate crooks or corrupt Republicans stealing Democratic memos off the network and think, "Damn! I wish I had gotten away with that!"
In this situation, the Republicans come away looking like the sly rogues who "got away with it," and the Democrats look like beleasguered victims... and at the end of the day, most people would rather be the victimizers than the victims, and thus will identify with the Republicans.
The law is, if it's meant to be secure (whether or not it actually is being immaterial) then accessing that information without permission is a major felony.
So, when will we see the perps in prison? Not that Whitewater, this-is-just-a-camp-with-a-fence type prison, but a real-live fuck-you-in-the-ass type prison? (Probably never.)
I've said it before, I'll say it again: Republicans cannot be trusted.
It seems like this should be a major scandal. The theft of confidential and private files is not small beans. There's hardly any information about it on the major news sites, however. Looking on Google News, I was able to find a few articles from small publications. I didn't see anything on www.cnn.com, www.msnbc.com, or news.bbc.co.uk.
There's a reply up there about "this is business as usual", but I can't think of any possible excuse or mitigating of extenuating circumstances for this sort of crime. Saying that "well it's been done before" certainly doesn't make me feel any better about it.
It's hard enough to take our government, and my role in it, seriously. Blowing off this kind of scandal certainly doesn't help.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
Not sure I saw much outcry when someone posted internal memos from Diebold?
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
Translation: "I didn't do it, but even if I did you couldn't prove I did anything wrong."
Now we see the moral *squishiness* of the individuals involved. If these files had been national security documents (government documents) or salary action documents (also government documents), would Miranda still claim that they were open season for anyone who wanted to read them?
Does anyone still believe that the USA Patriot Act will be used exclusively for criminal investigations?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Allow me to coin the inevitable term for this Republican crime: "CyberGate". This time, we should be even more freaked out than in 1972. The stakes are higher now, with the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions on the line, even worse backfire threats than Vietnam. And more importantly, Republicans cracking the Democratic Senate files and leaking them to the press demonstrates their predatory menace to the privacy and security of all Americans, all people in the world. In the shadow of Nixon's Watergate breakin to spy on the Democrats in his 1972 reelection campaign, and their bugging of the Democratic National Committee at the 1972 Democratic convention, this obvious pattern of criminal behavior at the top of the Republican Party is intolerable. Senators should be jailed, GOP party heads should be jailed under RICO as mafia. Otherwise, the Republican mafia juggernaut will barrel through every hall of justice, leaving nothing but destruction.
--
make install -not war
Still, I've lived for brief periods of time in towns where nobody locks their doors. I don't think it's dumb at all that this is treaspassing; most people wouldn't care if you randomly wandered in for a friendly chat, but they have the right to toss you out if you're being a bastard, and a right to their privacy.
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
So they are "government documents" but not "official business." And it's not stealing because they were "disclosed" by someone making a mistake setting up security. You heard it straight from the Senate Majority Leader's staff: If a sysadmin mistake allows you to get into a system, then everything in the system is freely "disclosed" and there's no penalty for copying it.
Also, documents can be "government" but not "official" - presumably the Republican Party is the only "official" government by now?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This is one of those classic things that looks sneaky but within the usual beltway rules, until everyone finds out about it. Some smart guy figures out how to pull a fast one without thinking through the consequences. But this is a lot bigger than a simple dirty trick. It looks like numerous criminal laws were broken, although IANAL.
I just remember Watergate. The story simmered in the background through the summer and fall of 1972. Few people paid much attention to it. In 1973, the thing suddenly went critical and took out a major chunk of the Republican leadership over the next year and a half. The major crimes in Watergate happened during that quiet period in late 1972. But the scandal ripped the lid off a festering pool of nastiness with all kinds of secondary consequences. Guys like Agnew got nailed for things completely unrelated, but without the scandal, they never would have been investigated. If this blows up, watch for a lot of other things (Haliburton?) to suddenly show up on the law-enforcement agendas.
(a) Whoever
(1) having knowingly accessed a computer without authorization or exceeding authorized access, and by means of such conduct having obtained information that has been determined by the United States Government pursuant to an Executive order or statute to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national defense or foreign relations, or any restricted data, as defined in paragraph y. of section 11 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, with reason to believe that such information so obtained could be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation willfully communicates, delivers, transmits, or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
(2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains--
(A) information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, or of a card issuer as defined in section 1602(n) of title 15, or contained in a file of a consumer reporting agency on a consumer, as such terms are defined in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. 1681 et seq.);
(B) information from any department or agency of the United States; or
(C) information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication;
(3) intentionally, without authorization to access any nonpublic computer of a department or agency of the United States, accesses such a computer of that department or agency that is exclusively for the use of the Government of the United States or, in the case of a computer not exclusively for such use, is used by or for the Government of the United States and such conduct affects that use by or for the Government of the United States;
(4) knowingly and with intent to defraud, accesses a protected computer without authorization, or exceeds authorized access, and by means of such conduct furthers the intended fraud and obtains anything of value, unless the object of the fraud and the thing obtained consists only of the use of the computer and the value of such use is not more than $ 5,000 in any one-year period;
(5)
(A)
(i) knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(ii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(iii) intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage; and
(B) by conduct described in clause (i), (ii), or (iii) of subparagraph (A), caused (or, in the case of an attempted offense, would, if completed, have caused)--
(i) loss to 1 or more persons during any 1-year period (and, for purposes of an investigation, prosecution, or other proceeding brought by the United States only, loss resulting from a related course of conduct affecting 1 or more other protected computers) aggregating at least $5,000 in value;
(ii) the modification or impairment, or potential modification or impairment, of the medical examination, diagnosis, treatment, or care of 1 or more individuals;
(iii) physical injury to any person;
(iv) a threat to public health or safety; or
(v) damage affecting a computer system used by or for a government entity in furtherance of the administration of justice, national defense, or national security;
(6) knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029) in any password or similar infor
Maybe the "technician" set the password to "liberal" for the Democrats and "conservative" for the Republicans?
Morality and ethics aside - this is done everyday by both sides and is old news. It always surprises me how liberal the average Slashdot reader appears to be. Such a waste.
I can't believe you said such a thing. Morality and ethics aside? What sort of argument is that? Having expectations that government work in a smooth and orderly fashion, in a manner that will express the will of the people, is not a liberal position. Saying "morality and ethics aside" is like saying "notions of civilization aside". If being conniving, crooked and dishonest are your ideas of how a political philosophy should work, please point me to the other side.
Why should I argue rationally with someone being irrational? I'll just mock them instead.
First off read the article, the Demos go on to say "no harm no foul" since the documents aren't "owned" by anyone and are not official govt business. They even put the blame on their own admin.
A few other things to clear up: This was not a "glitch," instead it was a simple permissions issue where certain security policies were not implemented properly or at all.
Second: If a document is readable, people will read it. Right wrong or otherwise I don't really see what the big deal is. These people are supposed to running our fscking country not trading dirty secrets about how to screw the president out of a judicial nominee.
Sure the people who weren't supposed to have access should have said somthing, but by the same token I can say the admin should have double checked to make sure they didn't have access.
If the honeypot theory is correct, and Demos knew the documents weren't secure whey would they allow stupid shit like "hes a latino" go there in the first place. If anything they would place false documents there and make he republicans look bad when they come out with all these lies and rumors.
In my opinion this doesn't even hurt the republicans credibility...so what if they were seeing stuff they weren't meant to see...the shit found more than makes up for any "ethical" issues involved. I say we pass a law that anything written, typed, or electronicly produced by any of our governmental representatives (that isn't top secret or national security) should be made public within 24hours of its creation.
Its time our government was held responsible for all the BS it creates.
Apple free since 1990!
Politicians work for themselves. People in power (such as in congress) have something to trade. They trade the power they have through control of government in return for things. They trade some of that power to the masses, in the form of "social services", redistribution of wealth, and sometimes just empty promises. In return, they get votes that allows them to stay in power.
They also trade some of that power to corporations and rich individuals in return (generally) for money so that they can buy votes so they can continue to get more power (or maintain the power they have).
A modern day witchhunt.
It's not like anybody got a BJ or anything.
John Stockwell, former CIA agent, described the phenomenon of a "soft file". He had been a field agent, in half a dozen field offices, for his first decade or so in the CIA. His final field post being in Vietnam, just prior to the fall of the South.
Following his return from Vietnam he got a plum post, back in HQ, co-ordinating the CIA's 1975 Angola efforts.
This was during a period when the CIA was starting to get a lot of Congressional scrutiny. And the response to this was the destruction of a lot of official files -- together with the creation of unofficial "soft files". Since the soft files had no official existence they couldn't be subject to a normal subpoena ro FOIA request. The drawback to them was that your colleagues could only request a copy of them through word of mouth. But this drawback was worth living with if the contents would destroy your career, if subjected to outside scrutiny.
Should CIA employees keep soft files -- whose intent is to cover their tracks and deceive the American public? In my opinion absolutely not. CIA employees are supposed to carry out policies, not make them.
Is it then okay for Politicians to keep soft files? I dunno.
If any individual person (one of us, the slashdot reader, for instance) did something like this, we would be under investigation or arrest rather quickly. This is referred to in the media as "hacking". It doesn't matter one whit whether or not the victim was "wide open" or not. NOT have unbreakable defenses up on your computer does not make it A-OK for anyone to waltz on in and do whatever. It is considered a crime and many "hackers" have been prosecuted for this.
The Republicans are getting away with it. It is OK for them to do this but any human being (they aren't human) does the same thing and they're looking at jailtime.
Bullcrap! Say I. Equal enforcement of the law. Hacking into computers you do no own is considered a crime and it should be handled as such. It is obvious that Senator Hatch, hypocrit of all hypocrits, belongs in jail. His pukes did it (he probably thought it was cute and funny). How about I do it to his personal systems? Still funny? Still OK?
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
In this day and age, responsible file protection on the part of our elected officials is mandatory. I realize that's a loaded remark, but no matter how you slice it, something has to change within our Congressional offices and infrastructure. Either someone hacked protected files or someone failed to protect files that should have been protected. I have general administrative access on our LAN and even I occasionally stumble across files I can't access. There are multiple levels of security for all things digital and either someone is misusing them or neglecting there use. Is their a third alternative?
Soap Box:
I too am disturbed by this revelation.
But, if negligence is a factor (on either side), or some level of corruption, or misrepresentation of the people, then let us use our tricameral system to resolve it. Otherwise we are guilty of doing nothing but whipping up yet another impotent hysteria-of-the-moment using mass media. Take them to court. Elect new representatives. Our system of government is designed to be manipulated by the citizenry, intending to enact the will of a majority while protecting the rights of minorities. Problem is that the majority don't participate. The only ones doing the manipulating are an ambitious minority, some championing worthy causes, others power hungry and greedy, perhaps even rotten to the core, but all an ambitious minority just the same.
Judging from the relevant federal code (helpfully posted below), there does appear to be *some* chance that the Republican senators broke the law, by exceeding their authorized access to the files which, although were not "property" of the government, were stored on a government computer.
On the slim chance that any of the Republican senators are prosecuted, how much would you like to bet that they get off with a reprimand and a slap on the wrist?
Now, if the janitor in that office had been caught paging through the Dems' (or the Repubs') confidential memos, you can be sure he would have been prosecuted as a computer criminal. Judges are getting more heavy-handed as of late, and it's becoming increasingly more popular to invoke the Patriot Act in cases of computer crime. There's a very good chance that our poor janitor would have been tried, and convicted, as a terrorist.
But, because the criminals in this case are rich, powerful, important white men with many friends in government, they'll likely get off scot free.
I say: give these slandering, pandering, filibustering, dirty-bird legislators a taste of their own medicine! Let them be tried under the inappropriately harsh laws that snuck into the books under THEIR noses. It'll never happen of course, but it sure would be nice.
Dems and the media just had a big laugh about what a fun little caper it was.
o nnelly/70397_joel1 5.shtml
The 'Dems' were not caught spying on cell phone call. The call was intercepted by a couple in Florida who paid a $500 fine.
The tape was, in fact, leaked to the media by a democratic congressperson, according to this article (which is not friendly to the congressperson):
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/c
It is disingenuous, at best, to call what happened an example of "spying" on phone calls by Democrats. An elected official received the tape from ordinary citizens; no goverment employees or party apparatchiks involved in the interception of the call.
I would also like to see some evidence to support your contentions about "big laughs" and "fun little caper".
Send lawyers, guns, and money. Dad, get me out of this.
I just remember Watergate. .... Guys like Agnew got nailed for things completely unrelated, but without the scandal, they never would have been investigated. If this blows up, watch for a lot of other things (Haliburton?) to suddenly show up on the law-enforcement agendas.
Didja know that Rumsfeld was a member of Nixon's cabinet?
"Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Assistant to the President, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1969-1970); and, as Counsellor to the President, Director of the Economic Stabilization Program, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1971-1972)."
- Source
The Rumsfeld-Cheney-Nixon connection is also interesting:
"When President Richard M. Nixon selected Rumsfeld as White House counselor in 1970, Cheney joined him as his deputy. In August 1974, Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and asked Rumsfeld to be his chief of staff. Rumsfeld immediately sought out Cheney."
- Source
Rumsfeld never got press as a major Watergate player. But this is interesting:
"Rumsfeld was not entirely divorced from Nixon's political operations. There is no sign that he was involved in any of the illegalities of Watergate, but he was willing to offer Nixon other help of a not particularly exalted nature--some dirt on political enemies, some covert ties with a prominent pollster. The Nixon tapes reveal that Rumsfeld often worked with and was a special favorite of John Mitchell and Charles Colson, Nixon's roughest political operators, who viewed Rumsfeld as savvier than other White House aides."
- Source
Mitchell was an obstructor of justice, and Colson was a hatchet man. Rummy was close with those guys? Must be sweet to have a resume like that -- fits right in with the Bush administration.
-kgj
-kgj
This is just Watergate brought to the new millenium .... why should you be suprised .... only their spokespeople are slack jawed rednecks
Now as a network admin, I am in a position of trust. I can more or less poke around the system at will, read any files I'd like, and sift through everyone's email. While it is techically possible, if I were ever caught doing this I would be fired.
I'm not even sure I would get to clean out my desk.
This is not a matter of Joe Hacker forwards an internal memo. This is a matter of one competing faction within an organization abusing his or her access to a computer system. That is bad enough. They had to take it a step further and PUBLICIZE the information they found.
Joe Hacker is an outsider acting on his own. The Halloween memos and such, he has an informant on the inside. He may embarrass a company. He may steer a lawsuit. The worst damages are monetary.
Jane Insider, on the other hand, is committing betrayal. She is seeking to influence elections and the operations of government. All this while working for an elected official.
Both Joe and Jane should probably get an extended stay at Uncle Sam's Federal Resort. Joe for theft, Jane for treason. It doesn't matter WHAT party you are working for. You do not fold mutilate or spindle and elected official's documents.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
For those of you who didn't read to the bottom of the article, the guy who is supposed to have done this has said:
"There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and no violation of any Senate rule. Stealing assumes a property right and there is no property right to a government document. . . . These documents are not covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are not official business and, to the extent they were disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent [Democratic] staff."
These were not password protected files, they were on a network available to any members of the Judiciary committee. When the Republican's first learned of this (both sides were affected by the mistake) they fixed their files and told the Democrats to do the same. When they didn't, they took advantage of it.
It was unethical, but the only worse thing in politics is to be incompetent. Think for a minute now, if these had been paper documents which had been left alone in a place where any Senator could get to them, there would be no story here except that the Dems screwed up.
That newsmax article is absurd. The writing is horrible, the quotes are unattributed, and the analysis is the definition of bias.
So what? What's that got to do with the subject matter? You discount the news, without even trying to verify it, just because of the source?
Aw, for pete's sake! Do I have to spell EVERYTHING oput for you?
As I've read many times here on Slashdot every time someone comes to the defense of various enchroachments of civil liberties: "If the Democrats haven't done anything illegal, what have they to worry about?"
Wake up, for Christ's sake! This is how power given to the government is abused. It will always be abused, which is why we have to protect our privacy at all costs.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
here's hoping he goes to the theater to see a play.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Unless you buy into the theory that EVERY OTHER MEDIA OUTLET is controlled by The Man, could it be that, oh, the public just doesn't give a shit?
Well, that's only about 5 companies, so it's entirely possible that 5 large, conservative corps would like to avoid angering the party that currently controls all 3 branches of government. Go figure.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Since it will take months to sort out whether a crime was committed, I've drafted a summary of expected consequences for people who do this sort of thing:
Please note that the RIAA may seek additional punishment if the material was copyrighted. So kids, think before you act
You *DO* and *SHOULD* "discount news without even trying to verify it" if the "news" starts out its life with no credibility. See, "news" without basic credibility is "gossip" and giving gossip a venue into the social discourse is a very bad idea.
Without this filter, we would each have to spend hours each day dealing with the un-discounted accounts of Bigfoot Performing Dark Rituals with Aliens on their UFO's to cause Devil Boy to Possess retired woman's Toaster in Desmoins.
So yes, unattributed "quotes" about unsubstanciated ideas that belch forth from untrustworthy sources can, and indeed must, be assumed to be crap, and therefor safe to ignore.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
This isn't another Watergate for the Republicans, this is a StupidGate for the Democrats. Not only were the Democrats using taxpayer funds to pay for the production and storage of their political documents, they were giving Republicans free access to them. Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. The DNC's private servers would have been a better place to put these non-governmental documents, not on a taxpayer funded server. Everyone of those documents belong to the people of the United States which members of the Republican party in the Judiciary are...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.