Posted on 09/12/2006 5:15:39 PM PDT by ARealMothersSonForever
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Democratic rival acknowledged Tuesday that it downloaded — and leaked to the media — a recording of a private meeting in which the governor described a Hispanic legislator as having a "very hot" personality.
But Cathy Calfo, campaign manager for Democrat Phil Angelides, said the campaign had done nothing wrong because the file was available publicly on the governor's Web site.
"No one hacked," Calfo said at a news conference to address the role played by the Angelides campaign, first reported by The Sacramento Bee. "They accessed information that was available to the public."
Schwarzenegger spokesman Adam Mendelsohn said someone would have had to snoop to find the audio file.
"The file that was leaked to the Los Angeles Times was in a private area of the governor's server not accessible to the public without manipulation of information," he said.
Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said the sound file was stored in a password-protected area. She said she forwarded the Internet Protocol address used to download the file to the California Highway Patrol, which is investigating.
Calfo said she was unhappy that two campaign staffers had passed the audio clip to the Times without her knowledge. Angelides did not know about it, either, she said.
"We're looking into it now," she said. "Am I happy? No."
Earlier Tuesday, Schwarzenegger campaign spokeswoman Katie Levinson called on Angelides to "denounce the unethical actions taken on his behalf" and accused him of trying to smear the governor. Schwarzenegger is seeking re-election in November.
The recording of the governor's comments caused a minor controversy, with some Democrats complaining bitterly and others saying the remarks were playful and not offensive.
The recording was made during a speech-writing session in the governor's office last March. In it, Schwarzenegger and his chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, speculate lightheartedly about the ethnic background of state Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia.
After they chat about whether she is Cuban or Puerto Rican, Schwarzenegger says: "They are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."
With Garcia by his side, the governor apologized for his remarks on Friday, saying he cringed when he read them. Garcia said she was not offended.
Schwarzenegger, who was in Los Angeles on Tuesday to sign a bill raising the minimum wage, said of the controversy: "I don't really want to interfere with all this little, trivial things."
Asked whether the recording could have been on a public part of the governor's Web site, Schwarzenegger said, "Let the experts deal with that."
___
Associated Press writer Christina Almeida in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
As I recall she is a rather attractive older woman...
Sorry for the dupe. Please pull.
def two diff things.
Paging Bob Mule Holand
Uh huh. Then why didn't you release it yourself instead of leaking it to the LA Times? And why is the Times refusing to identify its "confidential source"?
The man is going down, bigtime.
BTW, wasn't this a closed door meeting? If so, they violated public meeting laws I would guess.
All that I know is that if you or I run a password cracker on a government machine, it will get a 10 year sentence. Even if it is a 1 digit password.
I'm sure the MSM will play it that way. /sarcasm
No hacking, cracking or theft involved. The file was available to the public, much the same as personal correspondence throw in the trash.
There is still the matter of who told the Angelides campaign how to follow the trail, once on the server. Lots of suspects. Lots of Democrats on the governor's staff.
I thought it was a closed door session? If it was, there is an issue of legality.
That was a very rapid investigation, Inspector. I forgot that a Dim could never fall under any scrutiny. Stupid Governor. If only he had kept his mouth shut, none of this would have happened.
"According to the San Jose Mercury News, Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said in a statement that the files were stored "in a password-protected area of the governor's office network computer system," and should not have been accessible to outsiders."
yitbos
"No hacking, cracking or theft involved. The file was available to the public, much the same as personal correspondence throw in the trash."
What are you talking about. It says above the file was in a password protected area of the server.
The Democrats and the MSM were fit to be tied, and Manny Miranda lost his job, but here, with Dems at fault, it's very different.
""The file that was leaked to the Los Angeles Times was in a private area of the governor's server not accessible to the public without manipulation of information," he said."
Not done by me.
The terms sneaking and bsaically, located in the seventh paragraph of Jon's frustrated tirade, outline the results of the initial investigation conducted by the governor's staff.
Someone left a back door open. Oversight or plan is a key concern of the CHP investigation. Plenty of suspects on the governor's staff.
I agree with that sentiment. Regardless, information that had a reasonable expectation to remain private was published into the public domain. Anyone that has been bound by a non-disclosure agreement or has had a contract to maintain a private server or database knows the rules. A government machine changes the rules to criminal laws. Unless one is really convinced that the whole Watergate thing was a minor trespass because someone had a key and did not kick the door in.
ROFL! We've gone from criminal hacking to "snooping." Manipulation? Like manually changing a URL, perhaps? I wonder what the penalty is for "snooping" and manipulation is. You can bet that every campaign snoops every inch of their opponents website. If you don't want something accessed, don't put it on the internet!
What does that mean?
Does it mean using a userid/pass not issued to that IP.
Does it mean using the backspace key in the address bar to reach the parent folder?
Does it mean using a VMware server to lift out the whole virtual folder that contained the private audio files?
Few know but that's the point.
When the parties are known, vague language is usually employed to prevent embarrassment.
Tell you what. Go to ANY .gov, .mil, .edu, or .org website and launch a customized metacrawler on every accessable port. Please let us all know how it works out for you.
http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid87_gci1187282,00.html
These tools are ONLY legal on servers that you own or have administrative right to.
It usually means a Meta-exploit:
http://searchsqlserver.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid87_gci1159718_tax301336,00.html?adg=301324&bucket=ETA
"I did not know that we were compromising the security" is not a valid excuse. Either the State of California hires dolts for network security, or someone actively compromised security. That simple.
That's my guess. They said they downloaded hours of audio.
Not an unreasonable point but the server was private. Not withstanding ownership, campaign speak is treated quite differently than common communication.
As was just pointed out, if you want to enforce privacy, don't put the data on a campaign file server and certainly don't allow access to that server from a WAN or even from the campaign's LAN.
If those transcripts had been printed they would have been in a locked cabinet, inside the office of a trusted staffer. Instead they were located on a utility machine, simultaneously serving the needs of the campaign's LAN and a public WAN.
(snip)
http://www.camajorityreport.com/?p=760
As previously reported by CMR, the information was obtained on Governor Schwarzenegger’s public website. While the Governor’s page no longer allows this, users could previously search a backend directory listing that showed every file on the public server, even files not linked to the main page. The tape could have been obtained in this way, and it required neither access to "a password protected area" nor an "illegal hack."
You got a link? < :-}0
The implication of government infrastructure and multiple layers of security, both electronic and physical, obviously isn't the case.
1 ) A public figure has stepped forward and admitted the transfer and divulged the path to that file to investigators.
2) The file was apparently accessed through a non government, campaign URL, via a public WAN.
Go here
Access the "MEDIA CENTER" menu. Top right.
Access "Audio" from the drop down. Third down.
In your browser's address bar, backspace to "apps" and press enter.
The server now returns: This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed.
Want to bet it didn't before the logs were reviewed.
According to this article, this was not simply a file that was available but you needed to know the URL, this was supposed to have been a password-protected file.
That's much more serious.
Turns out that you are absolutely correct. Just when conservatives try to come out and say that the GOP is not the party of S T U P I D, somebody comes along and displays this kind of ineptitude. Not calling Schwarzenegger a conservative, mind you.
Who said it was a password protected file?
Here's a guess: The file wasn't protected but the path to it from the campaign's new LAN through the LAN's O/S (probably MS) was.
An office manger wouldn't know the difference. All she knew is that from her MS workstation, a password was required to access the file stored in the new, hybrid network. She probably couldn't name the parent folder or explain the role of virtualization in network administration.
That's too detailed for me to follow and certainly for the general public.
Certainly I know that if you can guess the URL, you can see anything. Just on a political level, it seems that the Dems had to do a lot of work to get to this file -- password or not. That smells of desperation and dirtytricksism.
Even if it were password-protected, I doubt a real prosecution would be valuable for anyone.
I doubt if they used or needed any sort of password - My guess would be that they noticed the files available on the website were numbered, for example 1.wav 2.wav 3.wav etc.
When some worker noticed that 457.wav 458.wav and 460.wav were available, but 459.wav was NOT, they simply put in that address and the file popped up.
Stupid webmaster putting files on the web server that should not be there...
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