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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.