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."
That's why I'm a... damn!
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.
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.
If I leave the door to my house unlocked it isn't an invitation for people to come in. It may be dumb but anyone coming in is still trespassing.
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
not everyone on /. adheres to that juvenile interpretation of the hacker ethos.
besides, this isn't the same. if you correctly interpret the 2600 definition of hacking, the GOP folks should have disclosed the security vulnerability, not exploited it for their own benefit.
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.
I worked down in the Pentagon for two and a half years. I thought I had a really good grip on political machinations, having read a lot of polysci theory and having always been marginally decent at manipulating people. When I got down to Arlington I realized that the political power players are like sharks in a vast tank full of guppies.
I couldn't even believe the level of shit that people were capable of doing, willing to do, and doing every day to advance their careers and positions. A clever honeypot trick like this wouldn't be a wondrous masterstroke to top off someone's career - it'd be a move executed before they finished breakfast!
Sometimes I'm really upset by our divisive and angry Two Party System; it seems like nothing ever gets done. Other times I am very, very grateful that the government is not one gigantic unified son of a bitch, because then all those manipulative, controlling and totally evil tendencies would be aimed squarely at me.
Having clearly marked opponents gives them something to aim for and exert their energy upon.
Source code wants to be free (or so thinks 95% of the /. readership -- disclaimer: I'm part of that 95%), but I think you'd take an entirely different approach when you start talking about private memos.
If I access your computer and steal your private journals or letters to your sweetheart and leak them to the media is that "freeing information"? And don't go saying that they deserved it because it wasn't password protected (according to the article the techie neglected to put a password on the documents) -- if I steal handwritten letters to/from your sweatheart out of an unlocked filing cabinet does that make it ok?
The truely disgusting part about all of this is that the "Liberally-biased media" (in the eyes of Fox News and all the Conservative pundits) probably won't even pick up on this -- think we'll be seeing this on CNN or MSNBC anytime soon? I doubt it. Imagine the uproar if the Dems got caught doing something like this....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
"Green? Libertarian? Reform? Independent?
Power corrupts."
And PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
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.
> the Republicans claim to have informed the Democrats
> about it along time ago.
Reminds me of that scene in the Simpsons when Bart and Lisa are arguing about hockey. Bart starts swinging his arms saying, "I'm going to swing my arms like this, and if you get hit, it's your own fault".
Simple point: these Republicans had no business digging through anyone's files. Saying, "oh, by the way, we've got access to some stuff that you don't want us to see. Hope you fix your security breach soon, or we're liable to dig through your stuff again!" isn't much of an excuse.
Unless these Republicans would like us to just assume from now on that they have no ethics and act accordingly.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
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.
"GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications without a password".
DMCA Violation!!!!!
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Ahh, good old NewsMax. Now, there's a reputable and unbiased source for news, comparable in every way to the Boston Globe (est. 1872)
Some people consider this to be like Watergate, but I see it as far worse. The original Watergate crime was a single breakin relating to a political campain, this has to do with private internal discussion of Senators about matters of government. Ok, sure there might have been some real partisan politics mixed in, but the Republican staffers would have had to wade through a lot of messages to get to the parts they wanted to publish. I don't think that it's treason, but it's damn near.
The grass is only greener, if you don't take care of your own lawn.
(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
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.
You are probably trying to be funny, but what is not funny about this is if these computers were cracked by one of us and not a Republican staffer, these same Republicans would be howling for blood and nailing asses to walls. This is complete and total bullshit. There was a security problem that could be fixed and the Dems did not fix it. But the Republicans cracked their computers and shared confidential information. They broke the DMCA and several other anti-cracker laws in the process. Someone pointed out that the Dems have pulled this kind of thing as well, but two wrongs do not make a right. The staffers should be treated just as any other civilian would be in this case. And the Dem admin who refused to patch the machine should be fired and investigated to see if s/he is not part of this on the sly.
Some choice points from this article:
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.
Other staffers, however, denied that the Democrats were told anything about it before November 2003.
He said, she said. Regardless of the truth, the Republicans had no right to crack computers just because the potential for exploitation was there. Republican prosecutors and judges would never accept this as a defense for a cracking case, in fact they would laugh as they sent Mr. Cracker off to Federal Pound-Me-In-The-Ass Prison and have done so repeatedly in similar cases. A cracker who informs his/her target of the potential exploit before using it to break into a computer is never afforded any kind of legal protection.
Reached at home, Miranda said he is on paternity leave; Frist's office said he is on leave "pending the results of the investigation" -- he denied that any of the handwritten comments on the memos were by his hand and said he did not distribute the memos to the media. He also argued that the only wrongdoing was on the part of the Democrats -- both for the content of their memos, and for their negligence in placing them where they could be seen.
"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."
Again, bollocks. These were confidential memos which were clearly meant only for their recipients, just like all office memos and business emails are. And I love the blame-the-victim here, where they try to put the blame on the Dems for having an exploitable computer. So by placing their confidential memos on a machine that can be cracked, they are in fact releasing this info to the public with no intellectual property rights (like copyright) asserted? Really? So if I crack the TIA computers that means the Republicans released the information for free into the public domain? The Microsoft Source that was stolen is actually legal, free, and clear? Can I get an affidavit from John Ashcroft to this effect?
All this adds up to prove that the Republicans' vaunted belief in the rule of law is complete bullshit. The party has been taken over by outlaws who seem to think the law does not apply to them. The fact that this kind of cracking can occur at the highest levels of government with NO investigation into prosecution leads directly to a determination of gross negligence on the part of Bush, since he is teh top cop in the country and it is his job to make sure the laws are enforced and obeyed, especially by the staff of his party members.
It's not like anybody got a BJ or anything.
Yup. Few people realize that other parties exist. (I think it's funny they're called third parties, all of them.) USians have been raised to belive that voting for a third party is "throwing your vote away." Personally, I think it's the other way around. In truth, I really don't mind a two party system -- it's just that the two parties currently in power suck.
People can't find a candidate they trust, so when it comes time to vote, they either vote for the party their parents voted for, or the cute one. Unfortunately, they don't recognize the third party candidates' names because the Two Parties have made laws that make it tough for third parties to raise funds for a decent campaign.
Maybe this year I'll do a write in. CmdrTaco, maybe?
Yeah, I hate 'em. My state uses those stupid Diebold machines. *shudder*
But the Republicans got their independant council, remember? Unlimited budget, years and years of investigation, and he found (gasp) Clinton lied about an affair under oath. Oh Jesus someone save us!
Someone in Bush's whitehouse compromises an agent whose mission involves intercepting terrorists trying to buy weapons of mass destruction, compromising a front company set up by the CIA for such purpose, and you think it is the same thing. Even if the accusations from your questionable source are true, at worst it is making public investigations by people on the outside: it is not stealing internal papers of Congressman. It is not compromising national security. I thought Republicans cared about fighting terrorism. I guess that is just when it involves giving away defense contracts. When it comes to something that could actually be effective, it just doesn't rise to the same level of importance does it?
Not to mention the whole lying to Congress about WMD thing. Lying to Congress vs lying about an affair in civil court: which matters more? But since Bush lied in only 17 words, it doesn't count, right? I guess "I did not have sex with that woman." doesn't count either; I mean that is only 8 words.
Some of the stuff your link is talking about is public record anyway. I don't see indication of breaking and entering to obtain said files there. Even just obtaining the files in this case, was done illegally.
No one said Republicans have a monopoly on corruption in Washington, but they sure have perfected it.
Yes. The U.S. Government is evil. No, I mean it, I'm not kidding. I don't think there's much that could have prevented it from becoming so, but that doesn't make it right.
Yeah, both the major parties suck. And there's probably more of a problem there than you realize, since it seems you don't live here. My problem is this: Most people (maybe 60%, 70% of people I encounter) say, "I'm a Republican," or "I'm a Democrat." Never "I'm an independent thinker who can make individual choices on individual issues." It's amazing to me how many people think that not quite agreeing with part of their chosen party's platform is some kind of moral dilemma. I also know about 12 people who will mindlessly vote Republican because the party doesn't support abortion -- to the extent that if a rare Rep. candidate was pro-choice, they wouldn't have paid enough attention to know that and would vote for said candidate anyway.
Yeah, the system itself is a problem, but the citizens as a whole support it very, very strongly. And they do it automatically, too -- their opinions are so ingrained it usually looks more like indoctrination than free thought.
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"