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FBI Launches Internal Investigation Into Its Own Twitter Account (thinkprogress.org)

An anonymous reader shares a report on ThinkProgress: The FBI has launched an internal investigation into one of its own Twitter accounts. The account at issue, @FBIRecordsVault, had been dormant for more than a year. Then on October 30 at 4 a.m., the account released a flood of documents, including one describing Donald Trump's father Fred Trump as a "philanthropist." But it wasn't until two days later, when the account tweeted documents regarding President Clinton's controversial pardon of Marc Rich that the account began to attract significant attention. The account has not been active since that tweet. ThinkProgress has learned that the FBI's Inspection Division will undertake an investigation of the account. Candice Will, Assistant Director for the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, said she was referring the matter to the FBI's Inspection Division for an "investigation." Upon completion of the investigation, the Office of Professional Responsibility will be referred back to the Office of Professional Responsibility for "adjudication."

7 of 140 comments (clear)

  1. Electronic voting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps its time to investigate:

    1. Electronic voting, all those open Wifi connections, and crap Windows 95 based terminals with exposed USB ports. Do you really want Putin to choose the next president?
    2. Encryption, NSA allowed zero day exploits to go unpatched, and there has been an undermining of encryption. This has made USA less secure and it needs to be fixed. Quit talking shit about Syrian terrorists blowing up babies and start considering all those REAL political, business and industrial secrets that have been exposed to nasty foreign powers and their puppet agents.
    3. Baltic states in particular have online voting and a large Russian population among which agents could be hidden. That's very very foolish. They need to look at the soldiers Russian planted in Ukraine to shit stir and realize their online voting is a liability, not an embrace of modern technology. It would be trivial to rig an election in Latvia the way its rigged in Russia.

  2. This goddamned year by pushing-robot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I swear there's been a secret coup and The Onion has taken over the world.

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    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  3. Re:What is there to investigate? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, the computer script controlling the account is clearly partisan.

    I thought they already explained this: the Twitter account automatically tweets when a certain number of FOIA requests have been reached for a set of documents. I'm guessing that a bunch of FOIA requests from early in the election season finally went through, so you're getting tweets just now that are all related to Clinton. Nothing "partisan" or "evil" about it: just a script reading a bunch of finished FOIA requests that were probably started a year ago during the leadup to the Democratic primaries.

  4. In other news... by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Funny

    FBI launches investigation into FBI investigation-launches. Investigators are investigating where to investigate investigators for the investigation. They're thinking Buffalo.

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    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  5. Meanwhile in news that actually fucking matters by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Looks like the FBI has disclosed that not only was Clinton's email server almost certainly hacked, but the hacking got so blatant that even Clinton's own part-time staff who did the incompetent setup of a Microsoft Exchange server were able to figure out that something was going on and shut it down temporarily while she was still using it.

    http://townhall.com/tipsheet/g...

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    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  6. Re:Is that what you call it, "controversial"? by msauve · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Hatch Act only applies to people. An automated Twitter feed is not a person.

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    "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  7. Re:What is there to investigate? by kenh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bush White House email controversy : 22 million emails deleted, those recovered not made public

    Wait, when you say "deleted" what you really mean is "stored on mis-filed backup tapes" - right?

    And when you say "not made public" you mean because they weren't asked to be released to the public, right? They were handed over to the requesting legal bodies, no crimes were found, and the issue dropped...

    Wikipedia is such a lousy source, why not turn to CNN?

    BTW, The "Bush Secret Server" was a public email server, did not carry classified information, and was used in an effort to COMPLY with federal regulations (The Hatch Act), not to subvert the FOIA act...

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    Ken