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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.
Apps like Signal protect the messages from in transit snooping, mostly from the telco. However, if you leave the messages on your device, in the app, then anyone with access to your phone can get the messages.
The big questions would be did he encrypt the device itself, and did he use a strong passcode? Pattern unlock and 4-digit PINs aren't difficult to figure out.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
Dude, Michael Cohen is Saul.
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Now Trump resorts to no less than blackmail, publicly declaring that the U.S. economy would collapse if he was impeached.
Honestly, he might be right. I doubt it would be as severe as he predicts but we're overdue for a downturn. Global economy is weak. Tarriffs are causing issues. Our GDP and employment numbers are strong- but real wages are down after inflation and falling.
Any turbulence with the running of the country could cause a stock market shock and that might be all it takes to bring down the economy, it's already on shaky ground.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
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.
Hush Money is illegal if it comes out of campaign funds. It is not illegal if it comes out of other sources. This money did not come out of campaign funds, so Cohen is a idiot. That's easily traced.
Lots of lawsuits are full of hush money. Cohen is either really stupid, or is trying to stick it to Trump.
I take no responsibility for what I say. Even though I'm never wrong
Investigators also managed to reconstruct at least 16 pages of physically shredded documents.
WAIT just a minute here...
I was under the impression that the Supreme Court had ruled that intact papers discarded in the trash could be used as evidence, but discarded shreds needed a warrant - BEFORE their seizure - because the person discarding shredded documents had an expectation of privacy.
Am I mistaken? Did they get a warrant before the papers were shredded and discarded (i.e. he was destroying evidence?) Did he shred them and then hang on to the shreds? If not, they're "Fruit of the Poisoned Tree".
(If I'm right, I'd like to see how the Supremes ruled if someone made the same argument about encrypted phone calls. The analogous ruling might protect against seizing logs of encrypted traffic without a before-the-call warrant, breaking the "no expectation of privacy in data stored with a third party" argument for encrypted calls. B-) )
I was also under the impression that such "Fruit" not only can't be used as trial evidence, but can't be used to develop leads without tainting them as well. (Cops routinely work around this by "calling in an anonymous tip" from the next desk over. But that won't work if they ADMIT they got the lead by improper behavior.) Something like this could run like wildfire through the whole investigation's findings, making it useless in court and reducing it to prosecutorial harassment.
Also: What kind of idiot uses a strip-shredder for anything he really wants to keep secret? Have they developed a way to reassemble crosscut shreads? If so, how do they avoid the "ransom note assembled from cut out newspaper letters" risk of reassembling fine shreads into somethig that looks coherent but is nothing like the original.
(Not that any of this matters for Cohen. He already pled guilty.)
Stuff like this is part of why there used to be a big separation between criminal investigation and counterintelligence work. You really don't want to let a spy keep spying if you can identify him and stop him using investigative techniques (short of torture) that would bring a criminal case down in flames.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.
"Apparently in violation of campaign finance laws"
I'm confused how paying off Denials was part of Trumps political campaign any more then any of the payments Bill Cosby made to those he was trying to keep silent. I mean, isn't 'protection your reputation' something you can do at any time regardless of running for public office? Aren't those kinds of payments normal for CEO's and various celebrities? He made a bunch of his staff sing NDA's , so does the salary of all of those staffers which was only received on condition of signing an NDA count as a campaign contribution?
Not saying the man isn't dishonest or doesn't deserve what he get's here, but that seems like a real stretch of the law's intent if not it's actual practice.
âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
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.
There's nothing illegal about any of it.
Speaking of narratives that have been created for you.
Ironically the judge and the prosecution seemingly don't agree with your assessment about the legality. But what do they know.
Cohen even confessed. If it wasn't illegal, then why did he cop a plea?
But yeah, keep telling everyone it's a narrative.
If done with the purpose of influencing a federal election, it is ALL considered campaign funds. https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/candidate-taking-receipts/types-contributions/
Considering the two relationships were in 2006, and the payoffs were done ten years later in 2016, just before the election, Trump will have an almost impossible task arguing that these payoffs weren't related to his candidacy in a federal election.
The determination of "campaign funds" depends on what it was spent on vs what account it came from.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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
Yes, it actually is.
What's going on is the payment is considered a campaign donation, because it was made by a private person in order to further the campaign. The campaign donation was not properly declared, and exceeded the maximum allowed donation to a political campaign.
Congresspeople using Congress's funds to pay off accusers isn't a private person spending money to further the campaign, failing to document it properly and exceeding contribution limits. It's different and it should be illegal, but it's not.
You cannot if the person in question is an employee of the Federal Government. Those NDAs Trump had his people sign, the White House counsel (who is not Trump's personal lawyer) even told the people signing them they were not enforceable.
This is a textbook case of the Ad Hominem Fallacy.
Train0987 addresses none of the points raised by the AC to which he was replying, but only attacked the motivations behind Cohen's plea and the prosecutors. Earlier here he had been willing to attempt to defend Trump by raising points, which the AC refuted. Instead of defending his own argument he switched to rhetorical fallacies.
The reader can draw his or her own conclusions about Train0987's honesty and integrity from this.
Expect to see much, much more of these attacks as more evidence against Trump comes to light.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
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.
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I'm not a Democrat or "left", sorry. The simple fact is, the Obama and Biden cases were about incomplete or incorrect paperwork that they later corrected, hence the fine. They never denied the contributions.
Had Trump simply owned up to the payments and corrected the FEC filing, this would be a fine.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Trump self-financed his campaign
No, he didn't. Here's his campaign financing: https://www.opensecrets.org/pr...
"Donald J Trump for President" is his campaign. Scroll down and you can see all the sources of funding, which was primarily campaign contributions.
He directed Cohen to pay with a check for crying out loud. He would've paid even if he wasn't running for office.
Running for office triggers a different set of rules. Don't run for office if you want to pay off your mistresses.
Even if it had been a publicly-funded campaign, see the John Edwards precedent.
John Edwards was put on trial for his campaign finance crimes. There was no precedent set, he was just acquitted by the jury.
No, actually the FEC ruled the opposite. But thanks for the continued lying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Indictment and trial
On May 24, 2011, ABC News and the New York Times reported that the U.S Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section had conducted a two-year investigation into whether Edwards had used more than $1 million in political donations to hide his affair and planned to pursue criminal charges for alleged violations of campaign finance laws.[118][119][120]
On June 3, 2011, Edwards was indicted by a federal grand jury in North Carolina on six felony charges, including four counts of collecting illegal campaign contributions, one count of conspiracy, and one count of making false statements.[121]
After postponing the start of the trial while Edwards was treated for a heart condition in February 2012, Judge Catherine Eagles of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina scheduled jury selection to begin on April 12, 2012.[122] Edwards's trial began on April 23, 2012, as he faced up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.[123]
In a related development, on March 13, 2012, the Federal Election Commission ruled that Edwards' campaign must repay $2.1 million in matching federal funds. Edwards' lawyers claimed the money was used, and that the campaign did not receive all the funds to which it was entitled, but the commission rejected the arguments.[124]
Twelve jurors and four alternates were seated, and opening arguments began April 23, 2012.[125] Closing arguments took place May 17, and the case went to the jury the next day.[126]
On May 31, 2012, Edwards was found not guilty on Count 3, illegal use of campaign funding (contributions from Rachel "Bunny" Mellon), while mistrials were declared on all other counts against him.[2] On June 13, 2012, the Justice Department announced that it dropped the charges and would not attempt to retry Edwards.[3]
Again, you are wrong. It is not illegal to pay someone to keep quiet; happens all the time.
The fact that it happened during a campaign makes different rules come into play. The fact that you don't like these rules does not make them disappear.
The Justice Dept. tried to convict John Edwards on the exact same charges; they lost, and here's why: when an act can serve "dual purposes", in this case, hiding embarassing information from Edward's family, in addition to hiding information that may hurt his election chances, the act cannot be considered illegal.
You're doing an excellent job making shit up. Edwards was found not guilty at trial. That's it. Someone being found not guilty does not set a legal precedent. Otherwise murder would be legal by now.
Alan Dershowitz, no fan of Trump
[Citation required]
So I don't like my senator and I find a woman willing to claim he raped her. I pay her $100 to not go public, he gets removed from office?
You also committed an FEC violation when you hired her, and another violation when you paid for her silence.
The difference here is Trump ordering the payment (assuming Cohen isn't lying). That makes it Trump's FEC violation too.
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.
That is why you do _not_ give your private key to anybody. The hint is in the name. Are you stupid?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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Running for office triggers a different set of rules. Don't run for office if you want to pay off your mistresses.
I don't think this can be stated enough. When you run for political office the object is to keep things for the election fair and there's not a really good hard and fast rules about that so hence the reason it kind of goes to court if you dispute the FEC's idea of fair. Now that's not to say it's all a toss up, there are indeed straight up laws that say, "No you cannot accept money over this dollar amount from any one donor. No you cannot accept money of any amount from a foreign investor that has no vested stance in US politics (ie. foreign company that has an HQ here in the US vs does not have an HQ here in the US)" and so on. But ultimately the entire point is to keep things fair. As one would say, is the "spirit" of the law.
So that said, paying hush money to keep a scandal from hitting the newspaper, is one of those things that: A. We don't have a hard rule that says that you cannot do that. B. Does raise the question as to how many people might not have voted for him had they found out about the affair. So that's going to be one of those things that a judge would need to rule on IF the FEC wanted to bring a case up about it. The funds might have indeed come from Trump's own pocket, but it does seem like it would beg the question of, "did that payment affect the election in some manner?" Maybe not, maybe so, but that's up for the FEC to determine if they want to ask a judge that question or not.
However, that brings me to my point here. One, we don't know for sure if Trump paid personally for the hush money or used campaign funds, but there's clearly enough worry there that I'm sure a court would allow the subpoena of records to double check that. But that matter aside, even if it was paid for by personal funds, did the action sway voters, in essence, did it make the election unfair? And it's important that people going into the argument remember this, that paying hush money when running for office, you have to ensure that you maintain oneself in a manner to ensure that the election is conducted fairly. So the other person mentioned John Edwards and that's actually good because it brings in how difficult it is to test this "did it change the election results?" question. It ought to be a difficult question to test in court because there's so much that goes behind an election, it's incredibly difficult to point to one event and say, "yes, that one thing tipped the balance" unless, of course, it's a massive brouhaha that would have rightly changed the election results.
So long story short, elections are supposed to be fair and there's things that aren't explicitly illegal that can make elections unfair. It's up to the FEC to take those things and bring them before a judge to weigh in on if that thing done did indeed make the election unfair. It's got a super high bar for the standard, as it should since elections are complex beast in of themselves. But the original question, "is it illegal to to pay hush money while running for office?" Doesn't have a clear answer since there isn't a law that explicitly states that, so it's a case by case kind of thing. But if you don't want to be needlessly investigated, it's best that you either don't make a payment and let the story hit or you do make a payment and then file the paperwork. Or you could go the third rail option here and just not be morally corrupt. There's not a law stating that you need to have any kind of moral compass when in office, but dang if it doesn't make a convincing case for your reelection or ousting in 2020. Just saying.
Get yourself a criminal lawyer. No, a criminal lawyer.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
You should care, beause it's now been established beyond any reasonable doubt that the President is a crook.
Now that it's established that the President is a crook, America must decide whether it is to remain a country that is governed by the rule of law, or whether it is going to look the other way on Trump's criminality and become another corrupt pseudo-democracy like Russia or Saudi Arabia. Because it's one or the other, we can't have it both ways.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Handing your karma bonus over to what is most likely a paid troll also won't help the situation. Please be considerate.
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.
Quite often it is not the original act but the coverup that gets you in the end.
Just ask Martha.