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To: Republican Red

Yes, but this is a much longer article, isn't it?

The Washington Times ran an article too, which is linked in the NR article. But they still got one thing wrong, namely that Steffen was drawn by MD4BUSH into spreading rumors. Steffen never spread any rumors, contrary to the Post, and that now seems to be true of the private emails as well as the public threads. All Steffen said is "don't go there," or words to that effect.


14 posted on 11/10/2005 2:46:07 PM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: All
Below is the relevant section of the law and the Registration and User Agreement.

Unlawful Access to Stored Communications 18 U.S.C. 2701.

"§ 2701. Unlawful Access to Stored Communications

(a) Offense.--Except as provided in subsection (c) of this section whoever–

(1) intentionally accesses without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided; or

(2) intentionally exceeds an authorization to access that facility; and thereby obtains, alters, or prevents authorized access to a wire or electronic communication while it is in electronic storage in such system shall be punished as provided in subsection (b) of this section. "

Registration and User Agreement

"User Account Confidentiality: User agrees to protect user's account and password and not to disclose account information to any third party."

The WP did exceed an authorization to access FR by using anothers password(Forbidden under the Users Agreement which govern the access of users) to access FRmails and did not make any attempt to determine the rules of access to FR or presumably they would not have improperly used anothers password. They flat did violate section 2b of 18 U.S.C. 2701 in that they did not view, or observe the rules if they did view them. If the reporter was unaware of 2b of 18 U.S.C. 2701 it won't help. A professional at a large newspaper should know or should have asked.

The article additionally points out that for Mosk to legally use the MD4Bush account he would have needed to get the permission of FR first, which he certainly did not. The only other way legally is if Mosk was MD4Bush, which I doubt.

16 posted on 11/10/2005 2:58:59 PM PST by Anti-Bubba182
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