Politics

Todd Shriber, communications director for Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT), tried to hire hackers at attrition.org to change his college GPA for him. He corresponded in email with “Lyger” and “Jericho” (former Phoenix resident Brian Martin, who runs attrition.org), who strung him along and then published the entire email correspondence on their site. To keep things entertaining, they made some odd requests: From: security curmudgeon ([email protected]) To: Todd Shriber ([email protected]) Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 17:30:44 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: Question for you or other Attrition members : Wow, I feel dumb now. I honestly cannot rember if there were pigeons on : campus or not. A lot of crazy squirrels, but I can’t remember pigeons. : Just for my own edification, why do you need to know that? I’ll find out : for you. Hey, squirrels work fine. First, let’s be clear. You are soliciting me to break the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a federal offense and multiple felonies. Obviously I can’t trust anyone and everyone that mails such a request, you might be an FBI agent, right? So, I need three things to make this happen: 1. A picture of a squirrel or pigeon on your campus. One close-up, one with background that shows buildings, a sign, or something to indicate you are standing on the campus. 2. The information I mentioned so I can find the records once I get into the database. 3. Some idea of what I get for all my trouble. When he replied that he no longer lives near his campus (he’s in D.C., and attended Texas Christian University), they told him that any old photo of a squirrel would do–and he sent them one. They ended their trolling by claiming that they had been caught, and that Shriber shouldn’t even visit their website anymore: From: lyger ([email protected]) To: Todd Shriber ([email protected]) Bcc: security curmudgeon ([email protected]) Date: Sun, 27 Aug 2006 03:15:31 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Re: the squirrels are nice here… On Sat, 26 Aug 2006, Todd Shriber wrote: ": " I’ll take a quick look on Saturday and get the changes ": " to you immediately following that. Let me know if it’s ": " OK for me to log into that site. todd… no more.. omfg we are SO busted.. fuck fuck fuck FUCK FUCK everything was PERFECT until their night noc ran a reverse udp traceroute back to one of the hosts we had set up after that, straight DOWNHILL. i’ve already been called twice by my isp asking about unusual activity, some other shit about access attempts to a federally monitored system they have everything in logs including the rot-26 stuff that finally got me access all goes back to your login sorry i really fucked up BAD theyre prob gonna end up calling you since they have your info just duck and run if you can, i’m going deep underground if they ask about me or attrition we don’t know each other you know youre just as guilty and liable so when they come knocking dont say anything without a lawyer and when you ask them to put the gun down say it nice because that shit isnt fun man dont even visit attrition.org again theyre trying to check web logs one last email should be ok but we’re so fucked sorry Paul McNamara has covered the story at Network World, and it’s summarized at Talking Points Memo. The full email correspondence is up at attrition.org, but their server is having some trouble handling the traffic they’re now receiving on this. UPDATE: Welcome to Todd and/or his colleagues at the U.S. House of Representatives! Domain Name house.gov ? (United States Government)IP Address 143.231.249.# (Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives)ISP Information Systems, U.S. House of RepresentativesLocation Continent : North AmericaCountry : United States (Facts)State : District of ColumbiaCity : WashingtonLat/Long : 38.8933, -77.0146 (Map)Distance : 1,975 milesLanguage English (United States) en-usOperating System Microsoft WinXPBrowser Internet Explorer 6.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)Javascript version 1.3Monitor Resolution : 1024 x 768Color Depth : 32 bits Time of Visit Dec 22 2006 8:55:54 amLast Page View Dec 22 2006 8:55:54 amVisit Length 0 secondsPage Views 1Referring URL http://blogsearch.go…Todd Shriber&ie=UTF8Search Engine blogsearch.google.comSearch Words todd shriberVisit Entry Page http://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.htmlVisit Exit Page http://lippard.blogs...n-tries-to-hire.html UPDATE: Todd Shriber has been fired. ...

As an undergraduate, I read Victor Marchetti and John Marks’ book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Marchetti, a former CIA officer, was forced to redact large portions of the book, and the publisher decided to print the book with a bunch of blank spaces to show where the redactions occurred. This led to a fun game of trying to fill in the blanks. (The only section I tried to fill in–successfully, as this was years after the book was published–was about CIA-operated air transportation companies operating out of Pinal Air Park in Arizona near Marana.) Now the New York Times has printed an op-ed by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann about Iran using the same strategy–it’s filled with black marks indicating the CIA-demanded redactions. This op-ed actually contained no classified information, but the Bush administration applied pressure to the CIA to get them to demand redactions. Leverett and Mann write, in an explanatory preface: Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House. Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins. ...

Steve Reuland at the Panda’s Thumb points out how egregiously bad the OSC has become under Special Counsel Scott Bloch, and how that led to its poor handling of the Sternberg affair: Bloch is a far-right wing activist and a notorious homophobe. Upon taking office Bloch immediately removed references to sexual orientation discrimination from the OSC website. Bloch has indicated that he will not protect gays from discrimination in contradiction of White House policy. Bloch is alleged to have used the OSC for partisan political purposes by ignoring claims made against Republicans while vigorously pursuing complaints lodged against Democrats. Bloch doubled the number of political appointees in the OSC, giving high paying salaries to many of his friends and fellow right-wing activists who have no relevant experience. He has simultaneously eviscerated the OSC’s professional staff, much of whom has either been fired for not relocating on short notice or resigned in frustration. James McVay, who wrote the preliminary report concerning Sternberg, is one of Bloch’s more controversial political appointees. He has no experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal-sector work. Many hundreds of meritorious cases, which by all accounts should have been investigated, were dismissed without investigation by Bloch’s office. Meanwhile, matters over which OSC has no jurisdiction have been pursued rigorously. (Sound familiar?) According to the OSC’s own polling, Federal employees are extremely dissatisfied with the work being done by the OSC, and effectively no whistleblowers have received relief as a result of the complaints they filed. When complaints were made about Bloch’s behavior and mistreatment of the staff, Bloch not only dismissed the complaints, he allegedly retaliated against the people who made them and issued a gag order preventing the OSC staff from speaking to anyone outside of the agency. Ironically, it is precisely this type of retaliation and intimidation of whistleblowers that the OSC is tasked with investigating. As a result of OSC failing to discharge its duties and taking revenge on aggrieved staff, former staff members and numerous whistleblower protection groups have filed a complaint with the Office of Personnel Management, which has launched an investigation (still on-going, as far as I can tell). Additionally, two Senate committees were forced to hold hearings concerning Bloch’s behavior. It almost couldn’t get worse. There is a long and sordid history since Bloch took over the OSC of cronyism, political bias, shirking, and unfair treatment of staff. Scott Bloch makes former FEMA director Michael Brown look like a brilliant leader and seasoned professional by comparison. ...

The December 17 New York Times has a great article on airport security, with quotes from Bruce Schneier and Matt Blaze. A few key paragraphs: The root problem, as some experts see it, is the T.S.A.’s reliance on IDs that are so easily obtained under false pretenses. “It would be wonderful if Osama bin Laden carried a photo ID that listed his occupation of ‘Evildoer,’ ” permitting the authorities to pluck him from a line, Mr. Schneier said. “The problem is, we try to pretend that identity maps to intentionality. But it doesn’t.” … WHEN I asked Mr. Schneier of BT Counterpane what he would do if he were appointed leader of the T.S.A., he said he would return to the basic procedures for passenger screening used before the 2001 terrorist attacks, which was designed to do nothing more ambitious than “catch the sloppy and the stupid.” ...

John Lynch has a summary of the Intelligent Design movement’s achievements for 2006, along with a short list of things they failed to achieve in 2006.

Ed Brayton reviews the new report to Rep. Mark Souder which argues that Richard Sternberg of the Smithsonian Institution, former editor of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was a victim of persecution. The evidence in the report itself fails to support that conclusion, which appears to be politically motivated. Brayton finds that: 1. What little ill-treatment Sternberg may have gotten (in fact, all of the comments expressing distrust and anger at Sternberg and urging his dismissal were made not to his face, but in private emails that he never saw) was largely self-inflicted, the result not only of his violation of procedures in regard to the Meyer paper, but in regard to several other instances of professional malfeasance and prior examples of poor judgement as PBSW editor. ...

Radley Balko describes an outrageous case of eminent domain extortion in Port Chester, NY: With the blessing of officials from the Village of Port Chester, the Village’s chosen developer approached [entrepreneur Bart] Didden and his partner with an offer they couldn’t refuse. Because Didden planned to build a CVS on his property–land the developer coveted for a Walgreens–the developer demanded $800,000 from Didden to make him “go away” or ordered Didden to give him an unearned 50 percent stake in the CVS development. If Didden refused, the developer would have the Village of Port Chester condemn the land for his private use. Didden rejected the bold-faced extortion. The very next day the Village of Port Chester condemned Didden’s property through eminent domain so it could hand it over to the developer who made the threat. ...

I just came across this letter from Paul LaClair at the Observer (Kearny’s newspaper) editor’s blog site, which corrects some misconceptions that have occurred in some of the reporting and commentary on this issue, as well as point out some additional details about Paszkiewicz and the school administrators’ response that have not been reported elsewhere, such as: * After receiving a reprimand on September 25 in response to Matthew LaClair’s initial complaint, Paszkiewicz made a statement in class that implied that the student who complained had misrepresented his words. (I.e., he lied.) At this point, Matthew LaClair requested a meeting with administrators and produced the recordings. * Subsequent to this, the LaClairs have asked for further corrective action, but none has been forthcoming. * The school’s attorney has been evasive and even suggested that the LaClair’s go ahead and sue. The letter is well worth reading in its entirety. You can find it here. ...

David Paszkiewicz, the U.S. history teacher at Kearny High School in New Jersey who has been using his classroom to spread his religious views and has been defended by his students and fellow residents of Kearny, has now made the New York Times. The principal is quoted as saying that he is unaware of any previous problems, but there have been comments left at my blog stating that Paszkiewicz has been doing this for many years. The principal also claims that corrective action was taken–a reprimand was supposedly given back on September 25–but Paszkiewicz’s classroom style doesn’t appear to have changed much in later classroom recordings (I have heard some samples from September 26, 27, 29, and October 3 and 4). The New York Times article makes it clear how bad Paszkiewicz has been–even conservative legal groups have no interest in defending him: ...

From the December 2, 2006 issue of The Economist (subscription required for full article): Gay marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S. (Massachusetts). Gays have the same rights as married heterosexuals, but only in civil unions or partnerships rather than marriage in Britain, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the U.S. (California, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Vermont). Gays have civil unions or partnerships with lesser rights than heterosexual marriage in Argentina (1 state), Czech Republic, France, Germany (3 states), Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the United States (Hawaii, Maine). UPDATE (December 18, 2006): Stephen Frug has pointed out that even in U.S. states which have legal gay marriage or legal gay civil unions, they are still not equivalent to marriage, in part because of the U.S. federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) signed into law by Bill Clinton. As a result of a provision in this law, the spouse of former Rep. Gerry Studds (D-MA), the first openly gay federal lawmaker, has been denied his pension benefits. UPDATE (December 19, 2006): The December 9 issue of The Economist (p. 66) points out that the inclusion of Hong Kong on the list of countries with gay civil unions is a mistake. Hong Kong “is reviewing its laws in this area,” but doesn’t currently allow them.