Slashdot Mirror
Encrypted Communications Apps Failed To Protect Michael Cohen (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Within the detailed federal allegations against former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty earlier this week to eight charges including campaign finance violations, are multiple references to texts sent by Cohen and even a call made "through an encrypted telephone application." Cohen was apparently a fan of encrypted communications apps like WhatsApp and Signal, but those tools failed to keep his messages and calls out of sight from investigators. In June, prosecutors said in a court filing the FBI had obtained 731 pages of messages and call logs from those apps from Cohen's phones. Investigators also managed to reconstruct at least 16 pages of physically shredded documents. Those logs, judging by the charging document, appear to have helped document at least Cohen's communications with officials at the National Enquirer about allegations from porn actress Stormy Daniels -- whom Cohen allegedly paid on behalf of Trump, violating campaign finance law. It's unclear if the FBI actually broke through any layers of encryption to get the data. It's possible that Cohen, who apparently at times taped conversations, stored the conversation logs in a less-than-secure way.
When you just leave the secrets lying around.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
It isn't illegal to pay someone to keep quiet. It happens every single day. Congress even has a special tax-payer fund they use to pay off people who accuse them of sexual harassment - to get the money they have to sign NDA's. When will those people be indicted for paying hush-money?
That Trump paid off the porn star with his own money may be seedy but is easily explained by trying to protect his family and he would've done it even if he weren't running for office.
and have a government that spends so much effort on snooping and trying to tear everyone down to the lowest common denominator. /Sarcasm
Good job we have are not like China and corruption IS investigated and occasionally punished. The man or woman on top IS accountable here.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It is illegal if you do it to influence a political campaign and don't use campaign money. In his plea, Cohen indicated the payments were made in order to influence the election.
Even in the recording, Trump declined giving cash and opted for a check.
This the same Trump who claimed to have not known about this pay-off at the time that it happened? If so, I'm a little curious how he could have both not known about it, and insisted it be a check.
You are trusting third party with your enc pub key. Thereby they can do whatever with it. Including using to decrypt your messages
You really don't understand how public key cryptography works.
The story about the DNC hack being a false alarm is relevant, but it's hardly anti-Trump. There was plenty of reporting about the initial story, but follow-ups like this often get far less coverage. I think it's responsible for Slashdot to post that story.
There's a broader implication to this story. Law enforcement complains loudly about encryption impeding their investigation. That may impact the ability for ordinary users to encrypt their private data. This story matters because Michael Cohen was a high profile attorney with access to considerable resources to keep his communications private. Despite the encryption, federal investigators were able to obtain the data they sought. This was in June, before it was obvious that Cohen was cooperating with investigators. This story matters because it's a counter-narrative to the claim that encryption is stifling investigations.
I'll give you the story about Reality Winner, but that's one out of three. I just don't think the real significance of this story is about Trump, but rather that about the impact of encryption on the abilities of law enforcement to conduct investigations.
The argument goes that paying the hush money during the campaign was intended to further the goals of the campaign, and therefore is campaign related spending.
You'll note that the hush money was paid during the campaign and not back in 2006 when it happened.
So, tell us again, how does the shady lawyer for Trump paying out hush money during the campaign to keep this out of the news isn't related to the campaign? The entire purpose of the hush money was to benefit the campaign.
It's campaign related spending, which was not declared. That's a violation of campaign financing laws, and that is what Cohen plead guilty to.
But somehow we're supposed to believe that Trump's lawyer paid off porn star without the knowledge of Trump, purely out of the goodness of his own heart, and meant in no way to benefit the campaign?
Now that's some grade-fucking-A bullshit right there.
Sorry, just more of Trump's complete disregard for the law, and trying to make it sound like it was all perfectly normal.
Not buying it.
Since when do laws matter anymore? Laws are for the little people. Trump is KING OF AMERICA and above all laws! Just you wait and see -- all the facts will come out and none of it will matter at all
Nope. Those were paperwork errors that were corrected and thus the fines. Trump claimed the affairs and subsequent payments never happened. Had he owned up to them, then it would have been just like Obama and Biden -- a paperwork error to correct, and a fine. Instead, his lying about it and directing Cohen to make what constitutes an illegal payment brought felony charges.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Do you really not understand the qualitative difference between these things? The Obama campaign finance violations were all basically just a matter of missing deadlines. More importantly there's no evidence that it was willful. Even more importantly, there's absolutely no evidence that Obama directed it, or was even aware that it happened.
In this case, you could make an argument that they were just really, really late on reporting and refunding the illegal campaign contribution, except that, since they're still trying to hold Stormy Daniels to the agreement in court, they clearly have no intention of getting the money back and refunding it. Not to mention that Cohen and Trump have repeatedly lied in the past about it even happening, what the source of the funds were, whether Cohen was reimbursed, etc., etc. So this isn't some case of making a mistake and saying "Mea culpa" and getting a fine. So, clearly this is a willful, not accidental, violation. Beyond that Cohen is alleging that Trump knew about these violations and directed them. There's already pretty much absolute proof that he did for at least one of them on the tapes,
So, go on, make your claims about the left being the hypocritical ones. To clarify, the Democrats and the Republicans are both pretty right wing, really, but the Republicans are clearly more right wing in most respects, although they're clearly not "conservative" anymore in a social sense at least. Overall, when it comes to hypocrisy and corruption, lies, moral cowardice, etc. there's plenty to go around for both of them, but there's definitely a lot more of that going on with the Republicans these days than with the Democrats.