Discussion for article #229410
The real news here is somebody still has a MySpace account.
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That was in 2007, an eon ago in cyber terms.
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Fake news article? I’m shocked…
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The Washington Times wasn’t credible enough?
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This is seriously messed up. Even worse is how unapologetic the FBI is about it, essentially having their agent say they will do this again whenever the feel like it.
And why has it taken 7 years to surface?
I have the hardest time understanding a world where the federal government uses the same techniques they’re actively seeking to incarcerate others for using. That’s justice? All of a sudden, the law doesn’t apply to government agencies?
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As a Seattlite I’m not sure how I feel about this. The Times is a right-wing rag and the publisher Frank Blethen, by abrogating a Joint Operations Agreement, destroyed his competition and made Seattle a one paper town. The paper was also a major donor to the campaign of Republican gubernatorial candidate, anti-labor and anti-ACA litigant Rob McKenna. Did I mention that the publisher was also got caught shooting his neighbor’s dog?
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"the FBI spoofed the Times website in 2007 "
Thanks Obama.
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Ahem. In 2007.
jw1
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Ha ha! You’re right, this happened in 2007, I’m an idiot.
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So they phished him, big deal.
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I’m having a hard time being outraged about this. This is a sting operation, something law enforcement has done for as long as there have been law enforcement agencies. The only difference here is that it uses electronic media. They dangled some bait, and the fish bit the hook. What’s to be outraged about?
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J. Edna Hoover is surely looking up with envy at all the secrets he is missing out on with the modern technology.
I am not seeing that they hacked the paper’s website, just that they created a fake site with one story and sent the URL to just one person they thought was dangerous. That does not get my panties in a bunch. Am I wrong?
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No. No you are not. I’m really not seeing what the story is here.
The FBI is no less apologetic for faking a newspaper’s on-line look than “some posters” were in defending three political scientists’ misuse of official state seals to influence voters in three states. Situational ethics are truly situational, aren’t they?
By the way, the good that comes from catching someone threatening to bomb a school outweighs any theoretical harm done to the newspaper, to paraphrase a core argument of the “voting experiment’s” defenders.
I was about to post a nearly identical comment.
If they sent such a link to him, or even posted it to his myspace account, it is not like the general public could stumble upon the fake. No reader of the Seattle Times could view the article, or be affected by FBI spyware.
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Me neither. I see a lot of false equivalency. They dummied up a site and directly phished a suspect. No one else saw the story/site.
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You seriously don’t see the difference between a sting presenting itself as a news rag to find a subject and pretending something you cook up in you office has the authority and oversight of a government agency?
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