Posted on 01/17/2005 12:08:09 PM PST by RatherBiased.com
The handling of documents appears to have tripped up CBS News again, and once more bloggers have provided instant - and biting - critiques of the incident.
After an independent panel published its findings on the use of unverified documents relating to President Bush's National Guard duty on "60 Minutes Wednesday," the entire 234-page report was made available on the CBS News Web site and that of the law firm hired to handle the inquiry, Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham. But several Web sites noted that the posting of the report had been altered two days after it was placed on the Web page.
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"I'd written a couple of pieces on the document earlier in the week," said Ernest Miller, a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School who writes a popular blog on Internet law (www.corante.com/importance). "Then I noticed that I couldn't copy and paste from the report as I did in days past."
With the help of Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and fellow blogger (sethf.com/infothought/blog/), Mr. Miller found that the document's encryption settings had been changed and, as a result, the text could not be copied. Anyone who downloaded the panel's report from either the CBS News servers or those of the law firm would have to retype any passages they wished to include in, say, an e-mail message or a blog post.
In the lightning-fast realm of online commentary, the change was akin to dumping molasses on a blogger's keyboard. "Now why would CBS News do that?" Mr. Miller asked on his Web site. "What happened to the transparency?"
According to Linda Mason, a CBS News executive who served as a liaison between the network and the independent panel, an attorney from the law firm called her on Wednesday and asked that the digital restrictions be made - including the prevention of copying and pasting. The fear, it seems, was that an enterprising ne'er-do-well could copy the text into a new document and begin circulating a faked version of the report.
"The bloggers and anybody else can do what they want with it," Ms. Mason said. "It's out there for the public to see. We're not trying to hide anything."
But few bloggers were buying that. Many sites were suggesting ways to beat the encryption settings, and others, like rathergate.com, were more than happy to make available the earlier, unrestricted version of the report.
"They're just putting up speed bumps," Mr. Miller said. "It makes CBS look bad."
Looks as if CBS could do with a few high school techies.
Nah.
We're not Mary Mapes or Dan Rather.
527 see-BS just do'nt get it!
"could copy the text into a new document and begin circulating a faked version of the report."
Hey, then we could say it is 'fake - but real', and call on Dirty Dan to answer the 'serious charges' these documents allege.
Certainly not before making a 4th or 5th generation xerox copy and then faxing it through that Twilight Zone fax machine in TX that sends the document into a 1970's time warp.
The type face in the report looks surprisenly like that used in the fake memos. Could CBS itself be the actual source for the memos? (Nah, they wouldn't do that would they?)
/off spoofing
If Jay read it as written, it would work without modification.
that's what I was thinking, lol
Gee, so did CBS not coming clean about Dick Thornburg's legal ties to CBS. Go figure.
bttt
You cannot cut and paste from a "protected" Adobe Acrobat PDF file.
My Advanced PDF Password Recovery Version 1.46 cracked it in like one second though.
Zzzzz...
Mail me if someone needs an unprotected copy.
I have software that can convert the typed page to a word document.
I like the "Transparency" (a PC term) of the investigative report. Yep, the investigators concluded that there was no bias, but presented plenty of evidence that there was bias. Sooooo, I guess that that all adds up to the following:
1. The Managing News Editor's name is: Dan "Rather" Biased.
2. CBS is the abbreviation for: Clearly Biased Stories.
Surely there is little danger of this now that Rather has given up continuing his shenanigans like the TANG fiasco!
And I woulda gotten away with it too, except for those pesky kids!
"The bloggers and anybody else can do what they want with it," Ms. Mason said. "It's out there for the public to see. We're not trying to hide anything."
I don't even know where to begin in trying to wade through the stupidity there. So they're afraid of someone "faking" a report? Oh, you mean like CBS did? Geez, what irony.
But if that's what they are worried about then why turn around and say "anybody else can do what they want with it"? Does that include a faked report? LOL
And as someone pointed out, all you have to do is use SELECT ALL, COPY and then PASTE into a Word doc. Then you can do all the "faking" you want with the text.
That reply of hers is almost as lame as Dan Rather's first responses to this whole fiasco. The (C)BS pile just gets higher and higher and higher and...
It's also reasonably easy using a Mac with OS X:
Edit
Select All
Save as Text
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