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Ex-CBS Reporter Claims Government Agency Bugged Her Computer
RoccamOccam writes A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a "government-related entity" that planted classified documents on her computer. In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was "shocked" and "flabbergasted" at what the analysis revealed. "This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn't have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America," Attkisson quotes the source saying.
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Look, this isn't what hacking looks like, unless it's being done by a 14yo who installed VNC on your machine and is just fucking with you. Why would a super seekrit Obummer conspiracy go to the effort to plant spyware on her computer and then use it by PRESSING BACKSPACE? While she was editing? That's beyond nutty.
Yes.
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Not how someone with remote control over a computer would wipe data. Not deleting it in the fucking editor. A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.
She almost certainly held down control and backspace by accident and blamed it on the government. Classic paranoid ideation.
I can't wait to see the partisan reactions. Fox News and the Glenn Beck empire will crow about how this is worst presidential act in history, MSNBC will dismiss it as a looney conspiracy theory, and people will approach the story with their biases.
Actually. Better theory. She was on a laptop, didn't have the touchpad disabled, and accidentally highlighted some text while typing. Poof gone, and happens to all over us.
Sounds like someone needs to explain to her what the "Insert" key does.
Aka Mr. Whats the frequency kevin ?
Aka Mr. I don't need the documents authenticated I know they are real.
Aka Mr. Why don't I turn my news network into a complete partisan embarrassment ?
Seeing as he was de facto running the news network there for quite a bit, it wouldn't surprise me at all if their culture had taken a turn into lala land.
As to being shocked at the spyware on her computer, i'd suggest "Number one" (seriously ?), I am hardly shocked at anything I see in the way of malware, especially if you let kids use a computer.
If it's done for personal gain, it's always a crime, but that is not always the case for other kinds of intents. A prime example: f a cop kills a man because he hated him it's a lot different than when a cop kills a man because he was kidnapping a little boy.
Even when a random person kill someone by accident, is a different and lesser crime than killing someone on purpose.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
What are you talking about? Nixon could only have wet dreams over what the US Government can and does do now.
The only two extenuating circumstances is that Obama certainly didn't build all this up on his own, nor was the first president to do so, but was in the building for many decades. The second being that the entire government is in on it.
Nixon is a great big boogie man to hold up, but his crimes pale against modern day government.
If the government was truly of the people, and concern with the 4th amendment - it would have decades ago ensured secure protocols and encryptions instead of backdoors into everything. But the concentrated shouts of law enforcement and the planners in power is typically louder than the diffused power of the majority. And instead of doing the right thing, it always choosing the lesser of 2 evils at that very moment (and there is always some "crisis), guess what? It still went bad.
The only point of your post is to act as an apologist. Sure, in the days of Nixon, when the government had its shoes covered in shit, and Nixon ankle deep in it appeared to be the worst guy out there. But now that the government is knee high in it, that point is long moot and gone.
And I say this all because we already experienced a guy who had the reach in his day somewhat comparable to today. Hoover. That guy had info on everyone and stayed in power so long because of it. I can't even guess at all the behind-the-scenes crimes he committed but since he wasn't a figurehead president and doesn't appear to have a party badge affixed to him, no one brings him up or attack him for shortterm gain.
Now the NSA is in the same position. And they have way more power to affect elections or politicians than Nixon ever had. Some Senator wants to defund the agency? Slip a brown envelope under her door full of her browsing history with a note saying "No $ Already?" and she'll get the message.
All it needs is the wrong director.
I just read a book about Watergate and it mostly makes you think Nixon was a rank amateur. Bungled, dirt-digging expeditions that were mostly designed to dig up embassing, low-rent scandals, conducted by second-tier political operatives outside of Nixon's actual control or direction.
It seems like just an evolution of the usual political chicanery employed up to this day.
The rest of the Nixon mystique just seems like hysteria. You can't tell me every administration since hasn't had a poitical enemies list or attempted to obfuscate their scandals and errors and suppress leaks. Nixon just happened to be caught in the tide of poltical and social upheavel of his time. It's winner's history.
Today's political skullduggery seems much scarier given the technology and powers the government has it didn't then, from the Patriot Act, National Security Letters to civil forfeiture.
The first article of Impeachment against Nixon was for attempting (but failing) to use the IRS as a weapon against his powerful political enemies. Obama DID use the IRS as a political weapon, but not against the powerful who could fight back but the small and innocent, who only committed the sin of opposing a lightworker. Not plotted, not consipred, all sides admit Lois Lerner DID use the IRS against enemies of the administration, Lerner was a high Party offficial with frequent access to the White House.
"Yet another" Benghazi-related story.
Color me surprised that someone who chases that boogieman doesn't understand what it means to prove an outrageous assertion like the one she's pushing. In her book, no less.
Yes.
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Not how someone with remote control over a computer would wipe data. Not deleting it in the fucking editor. A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.
She almost certainly held down control and backspace by accident and blamed it on the government. Classic paranoid ideation.
Later in the same article "It was described to me by the computer experts I consulted with afterwards that that was purely an attempt to let me know that they could do that, that they were watching, that they were in my computer."
You're right, nobody would break into a computer that way, unless, perhaps, if they were powerfully arrogant, and wanted to make a point.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What is...
used commercial, nonattributable spyware thatâ(TM)s proprietary to a government agency
There are just so many things that are hokey about this story.
The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.
Happens all the time to people that open random emails and follow unknown linkys.
Attkisson says her source â" identified only as âoeNumber One"...
Good grief. In other news, let's talk about "chemtrails"!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Because you know via your magic psychic powers that there's nothing interesting to report when the US left men behind to die when an embassy got overrun. It's not even possible someone in the chain of command made a newsworthy mistake, says your magic psychic powers?
This is why she quit - she was tired of being told they don't run stories that would reflect badly on the wrong people or causes, regardless of facts. This is also why "only old people" watch the broadcast news or read the newspaper for news - it's so blatantly biased these days, why bother?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.
From the article, quoting Ms. Attkisson:
She's not a computer expert and this part of the story I would want more proof before I buy it. I'd like to know who looked at her computer: what exactly this person's qualifications were and what exactly this person found.
She said that the malware found on her laptop was commonly used by the government... what was it exactly? Is there any malware in the world that is effective but isn't used by anyone except U.S. government agencies? From the article:
Slashdot collectively knows a lot about computers. Has anyone heard of spyware that matches the above description?
If I were a government spook and I was trying to crack a reporter's computer, I would use an off-the-shelf exploit, not something that pointed straight back at the government. I presume that computer spooks know where the black-hat marketplaces are, and thus where to buy new cracks as they go up for sale.
As for the classified documents, again I want more evidence. She should have gone to the FBI immediately with those documents if they really were classified. On the one hand that seems like a far-fetched thing, but on the other hand, the current Presidential administration is the first administration ever to prosecute journalists as spies.
P.S. Ms. Attkisson's first-hand stories about her bosses spiking stories, White House staff yelling at her for not being "reasonable", and all the rest of it are completely plausible to me (and fall within her area of expertise).
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
"commercial, nonattributable spyware that's proprietary to a government agency"
You can't parse that and have it make sense.
Commercial spyware that's somehow unable to be attributed to a person or organization? That defies the whole point of a commercial software product.
Commercial yet proprietary to a small group of government agencies? Again, that's not really the definition of commercial.
I can believe she had some sort of breach on her machine, most likely malware. Hell, I'd even be willing to believe there was some sort of spearphishing attack against her by someone who wanted data off a well-known reporter's computer but the rest of it just reads like a bad movie about the internet.
Of course, figuring that the head of CBS News is the brother to one of the Obama admins National Security Advisors also plays into things.
Nope, it turns out that the whole "IRS Scandal" consisted of a conservative Republican IRS administrator who put in place a consistent rule for identifying groups that had political terms in their names and thus were inspected more closely for trying to illegally apply for tax-exempt status as a non-political social welfare group, as required by Congress. The list had many more non-conservative than conservative terms in it, and many more non-conservative than conservative groups were looked into because of the system. And it wasn't done by Obama or the White House, or even approved of by them. Using an explicit list instead of inspector judgement was an attempt to be more fair and consistent. It was politically stupid, because some politicians took the list and manipulated it, ignoring 70% of the terms on the list to try to spin it as an anti-conservative attack. If that was "using the IRS against enemies of the white house" it was also, twice as often, using the IRS against friends of the white house, so it wasn't much of a political weapon.
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