Slashdot Mirror
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.
It says SPYware right there in the search results. Obviously made by spies.
"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.
Colonel Mustard: Why is J. Edgar Hoover on your phone?
Wadsworth: I don't know, he's on everybody else's, why shouldn't he be on mine?
A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light ...
There are News organizations that manipulate, encourage or suppress stories that may make a President look good or bad? When did this happen?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I don't doubt this kind of thing is happening. The government has been moving itself into ever darker shadows of secrecy to avoid oversight, while at the same time has been violating privacy rights of its citizens ever more egregiously. This is not a problem with any particular party or political viewpoint. This is just the nature of power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The powerful elite will always consolidate and expand. In this country, the One Ring of Power is the law system, and the magic is provided by technology. I believe Ms. Attkisson.
Having said that, she is going to need much better proof than she has or nothing will come of this. There has to be a smoking gun in the had of an actual federal agent. In this case that would be an actual order to spy, provably given by someone who is high enough to be responsible for their decisions. She will never have that.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
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.
How do you know it was the US govt. bs some Romanian hackers.. or the Chinese? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of evidence here.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Hey, it happened in New Zealand and slightly more than a third of the people lapped it up happily. Of the remainder, but bulk didn't vote because they were sick of it.
So, in another New Zealand first, we re-elected someone who learned from Nixon, got caught, and didn't care.
Whether the motive is political or personal does not justify crime. This is suppression of information for the purpose of affecting an election. Nixon was stealing information for the purpose of affecting an election. The difference is minor.
Journalism based on political gain is propaganda, and all over in the news. It's hard to believe any one news source these days, they're all biased one direction or another. Get your news from as many sources as possible, get the facts, and make an educated assessment. It's the best way to remove the journalists' biases.
Sounds like someone needs to explain to her what the "Insert" key does.
And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed
I've done that to people before. Remote log in and start keyboard presses like delete as a prank. It may not have been to delete the data so much as to drive them crazy. If she was hacked by specific people to cause problems, that's a very logical tactic.
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.
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.
She's well known for her anti-vax "reporting," so she's got more than a smidge of a credibility deficit.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...
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.
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.
The other option being: read the story.
Per her source, the deletion of data while she was using it was a warning. Warnings don't work that well when they're less obvious to the user. (I think Tom Clancy actually invented that move originally).
Knowing tech, ya, her story sounds like fiction. But then again a few years ago, so did dragnet surveillance, warrant-less/trial-less asset seizures, and drones executing US Citizens without trials With stuff like that, the known illegal spying, secret courts, secret laws, and fighting terrorism for the sake of the children, who could have predicted most of what is going on these days besides the likes of Grisham & Clancy?
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Sounds like a scene from the first episode of Torchwood. In fact, the whole story sounds like a failed pilot TV show.
My favorite quote from the story:
But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.
"They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.
Documents magically being deleted at hyperspeed, other documents planted "deep in the operating system"... yeah, right.
...I can't imagine how bad it would have been if not. He's had a lot of bad press recently. When it comes to bad news, some Presidents are Teflon (Reagan), some Presidents are Velcro (Carter). Obama is more on the Velcro side than the Teflon side.
Even better, she was on a Lenovo Thinkpad, docking station, and lid closed. Known defect, the lid presses the delete key. It took us a while to track this one down where I work. Lots of deleted everything. Why, they even have a BIOS update for this. Apparently that was easier than fixing the manufacturing defect.
Absolutely. Remember Back Orifice? A roommate's hosebeast of a girlfriend would come over and sit on the spare computer in the living room muttering under her breath and making random sounds while chatting on ICQ (Yeah, that long ago...). I installed BO on it and then would use my laptop to send deletes, backspaces and when I got really bored, send program closes to it until she would get fed up and leave to go smoke on the deck and complain to her bf about the "possessed" computer.
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.
Or the delete key stuck down for one of numerous reasons. More than once I've had vi starts beeping like crazy because I've shifted the keyboard and the escape key has wedged under the monitor.
i kan reed is a paid DNC shill that posts to /. He doesn't understand any of the actual tech stories and sounds like a complete idiot when he does post to them. However, a political story comes up between 8am and 5pm on Monday through Friday and he will post about 50 times to it citing DNC talking points to the letter. He has been called out numerous times and doesn't even deny it.
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.
The article continues:
"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."
Not saying that interpretation is correct, but it does seem reasonable to point out that she does in fact have a response to your objection.
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
Ah, so it sounds like there would be an interesting story there then, although it's a bit late for it to be "news" I guess. I'd sure like to read a non-sensationalized report on where the ball was actually dropped, given how embarrassing the outcome was for the US.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
"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.
> "deep in the operating system"... yeah, right.
DLLs in the system32 folder (why system32, am I one of 32 people being spied on?!?!) are seen as precisely that by the majority of people. So yeah, probably.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
| 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.
They weren't interested in exfiltrating information off her computer.
If you were a apparatchik and wanted to Send A Message, you'd use whatever you had conveniently available and was ready to use, and not something which could be dismissed as an accidental hack.
Why did Putin have that defector assassinated in London with polonium of all things? Why not an auto accident or a "robbery"? To make it absolutely clear who did it.
Note that this malware may be something 'off the shelf' for certain agencies (e.g. FBI/DHS). The government is large and heterogenous, with distinctly different motives and management. The people who really get into the nitty gritty of the black hat malware and know how to use it. (e.g. NSA) could be distinct from the ones who get "weaponized" malware ready to use in a package, "For Official Use Only".
Not deleting it in the fucking editor.
If you're sniffing key strokes, then it's not that much additional effort to insert your own key strokes in. I'd also look at the "computer experts" and "sources" that she consulted as the potential originators of the problem.
She almost certainly held down control and backspace by accident and blamed it on the government.
Or a keyboard or software malfunction. It need not be an ID10T problem in order to be innocuous. I think this story would be far less frivolous if we actually were told what spyware was allegedly installed on the computer. Merely saying that experts looked at the computer and found stuff is not terribly relevant.
All in all, this is a boxing-at-shadows story. There's nothing material here to tell us whether something actually happened or not.
It's really simple. There are commercial products (both hardware and software) that are offered for sale only to government agencies. You literally can't buy them if you don't work for some government entity, or if you don't have a direct and explicit authorization from a government entity. They are nonattributable to any particular government agency, but everyone in the know knows what company makes the product. The fact that you know the manufacturer doesn't make it attributable.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Now to be fair, you did "possess" it.
Life is not for the lazy.