FBI impersonated newspaper to finger school bomb threat suspect A US newspaper has reacted angrily after it emerged that the FBI impersonated its website in order to locate a target using snoopware. The Feds set up a fake Seattle Times news story on a counterfeit website in order to entice a bomb-threat suspect to disclose his location back in 2007. Links to the doctored story were sent to …
...the Seattle Times, and all media outlets, will start really hammering government abuse of power and stop soft balling it when an administration they agree with is in power. Secret Courts, privacy abuses, hell all government abuse of power hurts real people regardless of whatever ideaology they advance.
Go after ALL of them!
One would hope. It's sad that it has to affect the RIGHT people before something is ever done.
Just like the offshoring of jobs back in the 1980s. Nobody cared because it was blue collar working class jobs that people were getting paid "too much" for. Then in the 1990s, the white collar jobs started to follow. By the first decade of the 21st century, it was a flood every bit as devastating as the blue collar jobs in the 1980s, only NOW it's important.
There are many more examples like this was well. Only until something affects the right people, is anything ever done and by then, it's usually too late.
As I said, we can only hope.
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The comparison is perfectly valid. I am sure that a wire tap request does not need to mention call forwarding.
A huge portion of IP addresses are localized enough to at least pinpoint a residence.
Even if NAT is uses by the ISP the ISP knows which local IP address was assigned to specific customers.
Not really sure what your point was unless you are pointing out a technicality which might allow a criminal to get away with a crime?
Hey, you can't arrest me, you said you had pizza!
So sue us...
"On behalf of the Pizza Industry we are incensed that the police imitated a pizza delivery person in order to arrest a criminal. Such subterfuge harms our member companies! Without the public's trust in honest cheese and crust civilization will collapse!"
They could have created a page purporting to be the 'Seattle Harald' or 'Puget Times' or something like that. Hell, they could have even published an article right from the FBI website as a press release and he would have still clicked it. Although if they were to have tried it through Facebook, they wouldn't even need to the suspect to click on it; simply posting it to is 'wall' would cause his machine to send an HTTP request to the destination next time he looked at his 'feed' (to create the thumbnail).
Yeah, because Facebook has no security holes at all and would never allow javascript to be embedded into a URL...
</sarcasm>
Of course given how quickly Facebook rolls over when a nice man in a uniform hands them a piece of paper, the FBI wouldn't even need to post anything in the first place.
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most large Media has been in bed with government for decades. A little manufactured outrage to try to convince the plebes otherwise, seems to work well enough.
The paper is probably worried the "new Snowden" leaks are going to show them and other complicit Press outlets in a bad light and are starting the proactive spin control.
You can't kiss arse for stories, and send out press releases directly from the White House without critical review, and slurp everything else off the AP newswires without investigation, and then pretend you're surprised when the devil wants his due.
Unfortunately its not just the large media thats in bed with government that feels the effects; the entire industry, good and bad alike; starts to be viewed as being at the beck and call of the spooks. In the past the agencies have all routinely used 'journalist' as cover for their operatives. Once the opposition get wind of it, genuine journalists end up being murdered, kidnapped and tortured because they just 'might' be spies. Eventually war zones become closed to the outside world because the personal risks are too high, which serves no one but the governments running the agents who can pursue their agenda without scrutiny.
What the FBI are doing here is no different; it just contributes to the wider picture of government corrupting any and all journalism, to the detriment of us all.
And if it harmed a 3rd party, well that's just acceptable collateral.
Because the entire law enforcement machine is no longer burdened with the pursuit of Justice under the rules of Law. Efficiency is the only criteria.
Soon, waterboarding will become an accepted interrogation technique, because efficiency. Then we'll get wires applied to certain areas of the body, because fuck if that is not efficient.
What ? Human Rights ? What are you, a terrorist ? Come here, we've got some questions for you . . .
During a recent traffic stop I was told by the officer that "We are the Law" - I attempted to point out to him that he wasn't actually the law, he was only an officer of the law - but that only dug the hole deeper. And my offense? I had not stopped long enough at a stop sign in my neighborhood to satisfy him.
Unfortunately this is only too common now - "You know the score, pal! You're not a cop, you're little people."
Unfortunately you see this everyday in America.
Why did they need to use a spyware tool and a full fake website just to get his IP address? That address is recorded by normal website logging, it's trivial to get hold of it. All that was needed was attractive looking link text, as soon as he clicked they've got the address. No actual full website needed, and certainly no spyware.
Because there wasn't actually any spyware. I read the original story yesterday. All it says is they confirmed his IP address when he logged into the website. Message was sent via email to only him. The "newspaper" is trying to generate readership by hyping something that is a standard process for catching bad guys, especially people who are threatening to run another Columbine at the local school. The only people ruining the reputation of that rag are the people running it.
Why did they need to use a spyware tool and a full fake website just to get his IP address?
Lack of foreknowledge as to what it was? I would guess it might have something to do with the need to identify the individual quickly and directly rather than troll through a ton of data. I know that there has been quite a bit of coverage concerning lack of judicial review for stuff like this, but I would guess that in this case there was This looks to me more a case of weighing the reputation of a new outlet against the need to capture a suspect in a serious crime and not just a standard "think of the children being molested by terrorists" approach.
While I'm not sure I agree with what they did, the way they did it seems ideal for both the FBI and the Seattle Times.
As much as they might complain about damaging trust, what WOULD have damaged trust in the Seattle Times would have been if the FBI had asked them for permission and they'd said yes. As it is the FBI gets their arrest, and the paper gets to complain publically about it, distancing themselves from the story and highlighting how they're not in law enforcements pockets. It's a win win for both sides, even if they're unlikely to admit it publically.
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