Posted on 10/28/2014 8:39:14 AM PDT by BenLurkin
he FBI created a fake news story on a phony webpage designed in the style of a Seattle newspaper to nab a bomb threat suspect in 2007, according to documents obtained by a civil liberties group.
The bogus link was sent to a suspect tied to a series of bomb threats received by Timberline High School in Lacey, Washington, from May 2007 to June 2007. Once the link was opened, the FBI in Seattle was able to plant software on the suspect's computer, according to the documents released by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based non-profit that defends civil liberties online.
The revelation, which came to light Monday after an activist with the American Civil Liberties Union tweeted about it, elicited furor from the paper, the Seattle Times.
“We are outraged that the FBI, with the apparent assistance of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, misappropriated the name of The Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect,” Seattle Times editor Kathy Best said in a statement.
“Not only does that cross a line, it erases it,” she said.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation's documents showed that the FBI's story had an Associated Press byline and a link "in the style of The Seattle Times," complete with subscriber and advertiser content. It was sent to the suspect's MySpace account, and once opened, software sent his location and Internet Protocol information to the FBI, the Seattle Times reported based off the documents.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
These days the NSA would just download a copy of the suspects hard drive for the FBI.
Article is talking about Bush era. Source is NBC.
Yep, they be trying to deflect attention away from the Sharyl Attkisson story of the Obama era.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/10/27/highly-sophisticated-hacking-sharyl-attkisson-computers/
So predictable.
We are outraged that theBUSH FBI, with the apparent assistance of
My first thought was that info like this would never come out unless there was somehow a positive spin for democrats.
“Impersonating the press is just as outrageous as impersonating doctors.”
BWAHAHAhahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!
More like, ...as outrageous as impersonating a con artist.
“The press plays such a vital role in our democracy and if people believe that clicking on a link to a newspaper is going to get them infected with FBI malware, they may be hesitant to read certain articles,” he said.
It’s not clear, but apparently there was only person who had the link. The one it was sent to. It was not an open site on the net that people would surf into.
“Creating a fake news story to catch a suspect is unprecedented, Soghoian said.”
Uhh...not even close to being correct.
The outrage is selective. This happened during the Bush administration. If it had been during the Obola admin they would have praised Ovomit for being so brilliant and what a honor it was/is to have been tools for the Won.
"Of course, we can put anything we want onto your computer...
...but that's a good thing."
I tend to be VERY skeptical of tactics often used by law enforcement and government today, but I have to say, this is pretty clever, assuming they had a warrant to do this.
This is definitely a grey area though, because it’s illegal to “hack” into a computer system. Depending on how the laws are written, how the warrant was written, their probable cause; I can see this getting pretty ‘sticky’ in the courts. Given how this was done, if the person WAS guilty, they might have just effectively let the criminal off the hook due to how they handled this.
I think “reporters” these days are impersonating the press.
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