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Dateline NBC Mole Outed At DefCon
An anonymous reader writes "Dateline NBC allegedly attempted to infiltrate the DefCon hackerfest with a producer using a hidden camera. The show hoped to tape hackers admitting to illegal activities, but DefCon got wind of the plot and displayed the would-be-mole's photo before every presentation. Dateline refused to deny the planned infiltration. 'All journalists covering DefCon sign an agreement upon registering for the conference that outlines the rules, but the DefCon organizers say the mole apparently registered as a regular attendee, thereby bypassing the legal agreement. Dateline NBC is best known for its controversial To Catch A Predator series, which uses hidden cameras to tape men who are allegedly seeking to have sex with minors they met online.'"
Attempt to carry out what is basically technological espionage against some of the best technological espionage people in the world... real smart move.
They could've had some real fun with her had they not exposed her so quickly.
... did he bring the condoms and beer? In the producer's defense, I'm sure he just wanted to be friends with the hackers and talk with them, nothing more.
We want some answers and all that we get
Some kind of shit about a terrorist threat
- Ministry
http://blog.wired.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/08 /03/dateline_mole.jpg - she's cute.
Aside from the fact that what Dateline does can only be called "news" in a very loose sense, isn't this the kind of BS we should be expecting from Fox News?
Or would they already be trumpeting how they got kicked out by the HACKERS ON STEROIDS?
It is easier to catch perverts than hackers, 'eh?!;-)
"I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
Good for the Hackers. Fuck NBC and their bullshit. They wouldnt have presented a fair story anyways. They were out to paint all hackers in a bad light and produce yet another sensational story which i'm sure would have ended up with the word terrorism in it.
Dateline should stick to entrapment. It seems that they're far better at entrapping lonely horny guys and ruining their lives for tv ratings.
LOL! You mean.. you mean to tell me that that was going to pass as a DefCon hacker? That is just a great end to my Friday.
The only thing surprising here was that they had to be tipped off.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
should Journalists identify hemselves to the chef before eating at a restaurant under review? Reporters are representatives of their readers; I want MY reporters to be able to go anywhere without revealing their identity. When ABC's hidden cameras revealed that Food Lion was deliberately selling "iffy" meat, Food Lion sued on the basis of reporters falsifying employment applications. The courts eventually found in ABC's favor, as they should have! I'm sympathetic to hackers, but they deserve no special protection from the press.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Dateline NBC is best known for its controversial To Catch A Predator series, which uses hidden cameras to tape men who are allegedly seeking to have sex with minors they met online.
Best known for that? I think they are best known for rigging a pickup truck to explode when they crashed it so that it would look good on tv.
Their credibility is a wee bit low.
Very NSFW. ^^
Hacker: Look! Behind that mask hides a reporter from Dateline NBC!
Reporter: And i would've gotten away with it, if it weren't for these meddling kids!
How was she going to fit in at a hacker conference?
They should be charged with violations against wiretap laws for pulling this stunt.
The media believes it is above the law, and from a practical sense it often is. The media confuses the absolute right to print whatever they discover with a right to do anything they care to, legal or not, in order to obtain that info. They have the former (print) but not the later (discover). However many in power are so dependent on the media to obtain or keep their positions of power they rarely go after the media.
Don't get me wrong, I believe the media is an important check to the power of government. However the law is supposed to be a check on the media's abusive behaviors.
http://amishrabbit.smugmug.com/gallery/3253654
Their first tipoff was her "Windows Vista" t-shirt.
I can see the NBC headline now... "EXPLICIT picture of Dateline journalist EXPOSED at hacker conference!"
Ratings are more important than real news, truth, or helping someone with an obvious problem. I love how when a TV station is selling ad space they market the ablity to influence the public, but when they air programs that serve to lower the ethical or intellectual standings of America, tehy claim "We just give the people what they want." Which is it? Does the public control the TV or does the TV control the public?
We are all just people.
Ethical? Journalist? I'm not sure I follow.
May the Maths Be with you!
I think that, in any sort of event with open registration, you're fooling yourself if you don't think you're subject to covert surveillance. What would your opinion be if a private person, not a member of the media, used a hidden video camera to tape the proceedings?
Dateline NBC is an obnoxious show but come on, we've already achieved the surveillance society, and big brother, little brother and all the brothers around and in between are watching you.
Women tend to be good at social engineering and networking. She might be pretty good at 'hacking' horny geek brains.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
That dateline guy is really annoying and smug. He seems to take pleasure at lording over others' predicaments/fear. The predator series is just plain wrong for many reasons. It's pretty much entrapment, especially because the men are convinced by the girl at the end to enter the house even though they seem apprehensive. And what's up with the tackling every guy by the cop, even the ones who surrender? Does NBC host the show Big Brother? Because these jackasses seem to be helping bypass civil liberties by unlawfully spying on everyone and inducing them to commit and confess to stuff that is probably not even illegal, or that they would not have done/followed through on, but for the shows.
And then they would have to get consent to make an audio recording of anyone. And if they didn't, then it would be the MS NBC reporter going to jail or paying a fine.
Thinking that she would not be detected certainly puts an upper limit on the intelligence of NBC executives.
And I rather doubt DEFCON can impose any boilerplate contractual terms on its' attendees. Most would revolt! Few would agree the sky is blue.
Only be honest to your clergy, doctor or lawyer. Well with respect to past events that could get you into trouble, don't mention future plans to do so. ;-) Hmmm ... what if a journalist impersonated a member of the clergy, a doctor or a lawyer to get info. You know, I bet they have done it already.
I hate their To Catch A Predatory series. The questionable legality should be obvious to anyone. I don't like being in a position where I'm defending alleged pedophiles, but the law is there to protect everyone, even the accused (who sometimes need extra protection because of their vulnerable position). Never at any point was there an actual child who was in danger, no actual crime was committed. It's staged from end to end and yet they completely gloss over that part when their over dramatized edited version of what happens gets aired. This sort of vigilantism is not helpful to society. NBC are the real pornographers here, and sadly it seems people can't get enough of it.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Please detect and replace links to tinyurl.com with links to preview.tinyurl.com. This will help prevent trolls like the parent from getting away with "goatse" like images.
I want to know who the genius that decided to send a blue-eyed blonde haired female to a computer hacking event "undercover" was.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Him? you might want to actually read the article next time...
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
There is something deeply disturbing about this trend that NBC is spearheading. It is sick and twisted in itself to want to watch and see (AND BAIT) the 'scum of the earth' that are arrayed against You and Your CHILDREN!!! You know where the children are most safe from crime? Police States. And sadly, there are so many stupid, scared people in this country who make that deal in a heartbeat. Provided they are still regailed by entertaining tales of cruelty, sadism, and murder.
"They Thought of The Children" will be carved on the tombstones of free societies.
...had they pulled this off.
I mean, how could the average Dateline viewer *not* want to see this? What viewer in their right mind wouldn't relish to chance to see a group of balding overweight hackers, garbed in black t-shirts (with obligitary armpit stains) working on laptops for _hours_ on end?! It's TV magic!
Nevada, the state in question, does not require the consent of all participants in a recording. It is what you call a "one party" state, meaning that so long as one person in a conversation is aware of the recording, it is legal. So while I can't plant a mic in your house and record you, I can wear one on me and record what I hear and that's legal.
Also, most privacy laws go out the window in any sort of public venue. So even if there were restrictions, they generally don't apply if you are among a bunch of people. This would likely go double for a Vegas hotel/casino which have some of the most intense security out there. If you don't think you aren't on camera at almost all times, you are kidding yourself. Security in those places is truly impressive.
Also remember: If you want to prevent them from going undercover to your gatherings, that mean by definition you are ok with prohibiting them from going undercover to do things like investigate stores for fraud (like the Jiffylube stories). It's either ok for the press to do or it's not, you don't get a special pass.
You are surely fooling yourself in Vegas. Any of the hotel/casinos there not only have cameras, they have a SHITLOAD of cameras. They watch their grounds more carefully than you can believe. Most of it is focused on the floor when the gambling takes place, of course, but don't think they don't have an eye on everything else. You go in to a place like that in Vegas, you are being recorded, you face is being checked with facial recognition software, you ARE being watched.
It would be pretty funny if they didn't find Dateline's other undercover reporter.
This is an expression of the idea of freedom of the press. It doesn't matter that it targeted a hacker convention. You can't have your cake and eat it.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
visit http://tinyurl.com/preview.php and set this preference via cookie, i personally can't stand clicking on a link not knowing it's destination, thanks mainly to years at slashdot
We have a justice system based on punishing people AFTER they commit a crime not before
But soliciting a minor for sex is a crime.
(quote from article):Casey, a sexpot college student and aspiring dancer in tight jeans who is playing jailbait decoy today because her landlord dad owns this house. (Added bonus: Local prosecutors wrote her college a note so she could get out of a chemistry test.) Casey gabs to potential predators on the phone. "Come on over, we're not going to get caught," she says. "If we got caught, I would get into trouble, and everybody would call me a slut, and I don't want that, either. I'll pay for your gas. It's no big deal, trust me. My dad gave me plenty of money for the weekend." When the guy fails to take the bait, her voice rises in pitch. "OK, fine, whatever, lame. L-A-M-E. You're being a baby. I told you I've done it a million times!"
Yes, but the recordings STAY in Vegas.
This is a fun story. I like that she was outed and ran scared. But calling this unethical is just silly. There's no allegation of lying, only that she went in there undercover as a regular citizen without press credentials.
Guess what, you don't need "press credentials" to take video in a public place. Absent a contractual agreement (or the public shaming that she received), there's not much anyone could do to stop her.
Dateline is a horrible show. I'm quite glad they didn't get their story, because you can be sure they would have twisted it to sound as salacious and titillating as possible.
There is a video of her outing on youtube.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Look, if an undercover cop asks you to sell him drugs and you do so, you go to jail. Doesn't matter that he didn't use the drugs. How is this different?
It's the media doing its job. If no one admitted illegal actions, the hidden camera would have ended up in the garbage. If someone actually confessed illegal actions, then more power to Dateline. One of the saddest moments came about 1995, when ABC used a hidden camera to show that a food market was routinely selling old meat and fish. They sued after the show came out, and won! Well, good-bye to exposing wrongdoing. And 60 Minutes lost their suit to the tobacco companies, even though Jeffery Wigant was telling the truth.
Not at all, consider for a moment that 90% if not more of these people are more paranoid then the average paranoid person, and as part of the annual event they have "Spot the FED" contest ( http://defcon.org/html/defcon-15/dc-15-stf.html ) one would think this would be a pretty stupid idea. If they had sent in a tech that actually fit the part they might have had a slim chance, but sending a pretty girl in there was pretty much doomed from the beginning. Too bad for her now, likely within the week her entire life will be on the world for display. Congrats NBC for ruining someones else's life.
Where is BLOODNINJA when you need him?? That would be thoroughly entertaining. Too bad DATELINE would never air that. Where do these underage cybersex channel chats take place anyways? I wonder why nobody's found them and ratted them out.
--postmodern
Look, if an undercover cop asks you to sell him drugs and you do so, you go to jail.
Nope, that's also entrapment.
here's real photos of the mole
photo 1
photo 2
Note to NBC: if you're gonna send a mole to a hacker's convention, try to pick someone other than the fairly attractive 20-something slim blonde.
Maybe you should have sent in one of those predators from To Catch A Predator? They all could pass for hackers.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Pedophilia? If he thought he was chatting with a post-menarche 14 year old, it's not pedophilia. It's desiring someone illegally young, but it has nothing to do with pedophilia at all. Most men would feel sexual attraction towards young women that age. If they are past puberty, that's perfectly natural. But most men are able to control themselves and not act on any stray desires they may have, which is a good thing. It probably helps to not admit the desires in the first place, and possibly also helps to describe anyone who admits to those desires as a monster.
That control becomes harder to maintain once the other part is apparently repeatedly coming on to you, like in this entrapment. Face it, very few of us ever have apparently horny young girls come on to us, or at least not after we ourselves came of age. That he managed to say "enough", and stop before actually meeting shows to me that he did have at least some control. That he committed suicide shows to me that he realised the futility of trying to clear himself from the one charge where you're always considered guilty -- if not by the courts, by the rest of society. Your life does in reality end there, because people will ostracise and hate you for the rest of your life. Probably because those who so strongly want to cry out "monster!" are exactly those who know how precariously close they themselves are to being the same, and have a psychological need to distance themselves.
Back to pedophiles. Pedophilia, for those who don't know, is sexual attraction to prepubescent children. That's usually a facet of arrested mental development, and those who have it are completely innocent about how they feel; it's not a choice.
If they live out their fantasies with a pre-pubescent child, they commit a crime. That crime is not pedophilia, but child molestation.
If they don't live out their dreams, they are no different from those who fantasize about other strange things (self-mutilation, necrophilia, being raped, sodomizing the pope -- you name it, someone probably has a kink about it), i.e. we wouldn't even know it, and it's really none of our business.
I've seen what an alcoholic is capable of. One of my best friends had an alcoholic father. He still has scars, both physical and mental, from his childhood. In my personal opinion, the best effect alcohol ever had on that abusive drunk was when he was killed by a drunk driver in the greatest feat of poetic justice I've ever known.
You want a dozen alcoholics over a single pedophile? Fine. But first, allow me to mention a few more things. Just because someone is a registered sex offender does not mean they're a pedophile. Honestly, I'd bet that most of them aren't. Most of them are going to be people convicted of public indecency: streaking, public urination, public sex acts, that sort of thing. Among the people who are on that list for having sex with a minor, I'd bet about half of them were within a few years of their 'victims.' An 18 year old having sex with a 17 year old might be statutory rape, and will get you put on the list, but I wouldn't call the 18 year old a pedophile.
Also, alcoholics are dangerous even when it's late at night and everyone's at home. Last year, about a mile from here, we had a (presumably) drunk driver hop the curb at a T intersection and crash into someone's living room. No one died from it, but in the following month, we had a remarkable jump in the "Don't drink and drive" TV ads from the police department.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
On one hand, you have a tragically flawed and misguided news organization, which builds and runs shows like To Catch a Predator. They're a really unsympathetic party. On the other hand, as many have pointed out, you have the fundamental truth that sometimes, undercover reporting is vital to the functioning of a free society.
Personally? I'll risk the tragically flawed and misguided news organization if it means I have a better chance of learning when my rights are violated by my government.
I'm pretty shocked that that's so far from a unanimous view here, given Slashdot's libertarian bent.
1. the blondie wasn't there to spot hacker terrorists, she wanted to catch undercover FEDs. 2. she was given a chance which she declined. I bet it was quite a laugh. "According to DefCon staff, Madigan had told someone she wanted to out an undercover federal agent at DefCon. That person in turn warned DefCon about Madigan's plans. Federal law enforcement agents from FBI, DoD, United States Postal Inspection Service and other agencies regularly attend DefCon to gather intelligence on the latest techniques of hackers. DefCon holds an annual contest called Spot the Fed, in which attendees out people in the audience they think are undercover federal agents. The contest is good-natured, but the feds who get caught are generally ones who don't mind getting caught. DefCon staff say that Madigan was asked four times -- two times on the phone and two times at the conference -- if she wanted to obtain press credentials, but she declined. DefCon staff lured her to a large hall telling her that the Spot the Fed contest was in session and that she could get a picture of an undercover federal agent at the contest. When she sat down, Jeff Moss, DefCon's founder, announced that they were changing the game. Instead of Spot the Fed, they were going to play Spot the Undercover Reporter and then announced, "And there's one in here right now." Madigan, realizing she'd been had, jumped from her seat and bolted out the door with reporters carrying cameras chasing after her through the parking lot and to her car."
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Any fact-based news IS left-leaning. It's well-known that reality has a liberal bias.
Much smaller, and a bit rounder, also brown.
You're not *allowed* to talk rationally after someone utters the word "pedophile." Don't you understand that? If people start talking rationally, Dateline won't be able to make money and all those people out there screaming for blood won't have yet another underclass to feel superior to. You're upsetting the whole balance of nature; quick, take it back!
Uh. Male. Wearing a Rush 2112 shirt. Stinking a little bit of caffeine and body gravy.
Since you like analogies, a better one is if the police know someone's going to try to assassinate his wife, so they setup a sting and put a dummy in a car and the perp shoots the dummy, not knowing it wasn't her. By your...unique and...special way of thinking no crime was commited, let the guy walk. The wife was never in danger.