Is the Outrage Over the FBI's Seattle Times Tactics a Knee-Jerk Reaction?

reifman writes The Internet's been abuzz the past 48 hours about reports the FBI distributed malware via a fake Seattle Times news website. What the agency actually did is more of an example of smart, precise law enforcement tactics. Is the outrage online an indictment of Twitter's tendency towards uninformed, knee-jerk reactions? In this age of unwarranted, unconstitutional blanket data collection by the NSA, the FBI's tactics from 2007 seem refreshing for their precision.

Comments

Yes, but

[nwaack]

Yes, it's a knee-jerk reaction. However, our government agencies have done this to themselves. Most of the outrage is probably coming from people who saw "FBI" and "website" in the same sentence and just assumed they did something bad. I can't say I really blame them all that much.

Why not? (Re:No. Just no.)

[mi]

Not only is it clearly illegal

Please, cite the violated law. Thank you.

it's also a serious breach of trust

Trust between which parties? The fake was sent to only one person — the suspect, who then became a convict. The suspect knows very well now, that it was a fake — so he continues to trust the actual Seattle Times as much as he did before.

Also, we all know, that it is perfectly legal for police to lie — except, of course, under oath. So, which trust are you talking about?

Re:Why not? (Re:No. Just no.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, but from what I can tell there was no malware. And the fake website was just a page on a website where the FBI could see the logs. They e-mailed him a link to a story. When he clicked on the link they could see the IP address which requested the story. Nothing I read says it was any more sophisticated than that. I'm not sure they'd even need a warrant to do this. It's no different then e-mailing him a phone number and looking at the caller ID when he calls it. That's not private information.

What malware?

[mi]

The Internet's been abuzz the past 48 hours about reports the FBI distributed malware via a fake Seattle Times news website.

From TFA:

When the suspect clicked on the link, FBI software revealed his location and IP address to agents working the case.

If there is a slashdotter, who — from reading the above "description" — does not realize, that there was no "malware" installed on the doofus' computer and the suspect's IP was obtained simply from the FBI's web-server log, ought to close his account (and change his name)...