The top news at memeorandum is the Palin email thing again, and that reminded me of a case from a few years back, but I can not remember the details.
Didn’t a prominent pol have his private cell phone calls about something get intercepted and recorded?
Or am I just making this up and thinking I am remembering it?
*** Update ***
Lot of suggestions, including the call in the movie Primary Colors, but I am sure it was the Jim McDermott/Newt Gingrich thing that I was thinking of.
Moryfdd
I’ve forgotten how to embed a link and fear your wrath, but if you Google “Jim McDermott cell phone Newt Gingrich” you can easily find references to when someone taped Gingrich & Boehner chatting and gave it to McDermott.
David
Prince Charles, talking to Camilla….
Tim F.
John Aravosis posted a month of Wesley Clark’s phone records to make a point about privacy. He had Clark’s permission. There might have been someone else who had their records taken by a hostile party but if so I don’t remember it.
You could also be thinking of how the government listens to every call you make.
Wick
If I recall correctly, some long-time Democratic activists, “just happened” to overhear Newt Gingrich’s cell phone conversations. IIRC, this happened shortly after Gingrich became speaker.
Anonymous JIm
You might be thinking of the republican house conference call regarding Gingrich ethics complaint that got intercepted and turned over to McDermott.
Eric Lee
I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work :)
ploeg
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/congress/january97/cellular_1-14.html
The Martins ultimately got in trouble for intercepting the cell phone call.
Suicidal Zebra
Yep, as Davis said you may be thinking of Prince Charles’ phone being tapped by the News of the World (a UK Tabloid)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6301243.stm
Anonymous JIm
As an aside, Obama and his official surrogates should express outrage, condemnation and a desire to fully prosecute the perpetrators of this to the full extent (which also happens to be the right thing to say). Unofficial surrogates (e.g. Begala) should stress that it is govermental malpractice to use a weak e-mail service for government business (which also happens to be true).
Suicidal Zebra
Yep, as Davis said you may be thinking of the phones of varous Royal Aides being tapped by the News of the World (a UK Tabloid)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6301243.stm
droog
I doubt this is what you were referring to, but there was a huge phone tapping scandal in Greece a few years ago.
liberal
ploeg wrote,
So did Jim McDermott.
Marshall
Hey, what happened to thread 11343, about Palin ?
liberal
There was also the case of a Republican congressional staffer who hacked into the Democrats’ files.
Nothing ever happened to that criminal (IOKIYAR).
His excuse was that the files weren’t secured.
As long as the Democrats allow Republican criminals to escape punishment, things aren’t going to change much.
PonB
I think you’re thinking of the intercepted cell phone call in 1997 with Newt Gingrich…
Newt’s Ethics
– PonB
Davis X. Machina
The Florida cell-phone intercept case led to a decade-long ethics charge wrangle against Rep. McDermott (D-WA). The flap began in ’97, and spawned litigation that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
John
Paris Hilton.
smiley
Mark Foley?
Alex Knapp
You’re not thinking of the scenes in the movie Primary Colors are you?
TheFountainHead
I’m sorry, if you’re using yahoo mail over gmail you don’t get my vote on those grounds alone.
gbear
OT: John McCain can’t remember which continent Spain is on.
crack
Are you thinking of Kwame Kilpatrick’s text messages?
Ben K
I can only recall the plot point in “Primary Colors” — although there was a thing with Gingrich, too.
RoonieRoo
Remember Linda Tripp? But I think that was just recording conversations without the other end knowing.
Punchy
I think you’re thinking of how the govt illegally tapped Kerry’s phone in the fall of ’04 to get critical election campaign information…..
boonagain
If she had used AOL, then she should be impeached.
(What happened to the Palin Thread?)
shpx.ohfu
Most notable in the RNC/Gingrich recorded ratfuck was the fact that Minority Leader Boner netted a cool million on publicly being caught lying to Congress.
Egilsson
Douglas Wilder in Virginia ran into this.
DrDave
From 2002-03, Republican staffers to the Senate Judiciary Committee hacked into the computers of Democratic members of the committee. When it was found out, the official GOP position was, “Too bad you didn’t have better security measures in place.”
Charlie Savage reported the story for the Boston Globe.
So here’s some irony for you. Manuel Miranda, who was the Senate staffer implicated in organizing this crime, is now serving as the Director of Legislative Statecraft at the US Embassy in Baghdad. He is responsible for instructing Iraqi lawyers and lawmakers on
circumventingdemocratic principles.GSD
Camp McCain is trying to fire up the GOP outrage mill over this matter.
Sarah the Victim, look at poor Mother Sarah being attacked, even while she cares for her Down’s Syndrome child.
They want the spotlight back on Sarah and away from McGaffe and his economic follies.
-GSD
TheFountainHead
So I spent last night and this morning reading every statement Palin has made thus far. Well, at least all those I could find. I have to say, she has one of the most interesting (read: muddled) sentence construction and syntax of anyone whose speaking style I have studied. It’s fantastic the way she loops her sentences, finishing with the same clauses that she started her sentence with. She quite literally speaks in circles sometimes. No wonder they love her on the right.
Osama Von McIntyre
It was Mark Foley. His “text messages of love” to congressional pages were released, and that is when his world started to cave in.
Morfydd
I have to say, reading the screenshots of the inbox at Wikileaks, I’m appalled at the random jumble of personal and official emails.
I have different work/personal/financial accounts for a reason, and even then have to be pretty aggressive with filtering into folders. I’m just not able to take the whiplash of “Please pay this bill”/”Hey there old friend!”/”So as we agreed at the Tuesday meeting…”
Oh, and I’m appalled by the few email screenshots they had where clearly the only political issue she cared about was abortion. I’m a bad person, but I want screenshots of the emails marked “Ethics issue…”
El Tiburon
I think it was a staffer with Specter’s office who was stealing Democratic Senator’s e-mails dealing with the confirmation of Roberts.
El Tiburon
I think it was a staffer with Specter’s office who was stealing Democratic Senator’s e-mails dealing with the confirmation of Roberts.
John S.
So does anyone in the English-speaking world even realize that McCain either has no clue who Zapatero is or thinks he is the leader of a rogue nation (Spain) in South America?
cleek
i’m going with:
1. didn’t understand the question…
2. … because he wasn’t really paying close attention …
3. … and he couldn’t understand the questioner …
4. … so he spouted off some canned response to what he thought the question was
Punchy
No. This would require the McCanestream Media to report it. Which they would not dare. After all, he was a POW, and to ask such a question is clearly sexist.
r€nato
come on you guys, lay off McCain on the Zapatero thing.
He wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.
chiggins
You must be thinking of Paris Hilton’s Sidekick, I remember you doing post after post about that Fred Durst character.
TheFountainHead
Don’t know if this has been linked here before, but I have to say that both Biden and Clinton do a very good job with this half-hour webcast on women’s issues. Watch it and try to imagine Palin and Gulliani doing this.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
Good question. I think the authorities asked that it be taken down because it reveals our plans for an impending military attack against Spain, and could give aid and comfort to Zapatero, the Zapatistas, and the rest of our enemies.
Bill Arnold
The break-into-account-using-password-recovery details were interesting. I seldom set up an account with password recovery details for this reason.
No public figure should be using password-protected accounts which have recovery questions with easily guessed answered. Inexcusable.
SGEW
Well, in an eerie coincidence, Obama’s emails were leaked to the Onion earlier this week. You must click on the “interactive feature.” You must!
On a related note: I seem to recall reading in Woodward’s State of Denial (or maybe Plan of Attack?) that Colin Powell, when he was the Sec. State, had a yahoo account (maybe even aol? can’t remember). Woodward was appalled, and described it as being as secure as shouting the sensitive information from the rooftops.
Can’t find it in my hardcopy (stupid non-searchable medium!). Anyone else remember and/or have a link to searchable text?
rmp
Off topic.
Is anyone else having problems with this site. I’ve tried ID, Firefox and Chrome and all of them are having intermittent problems.
rmp
duh, I obviously meant IE not ID.
SGEW
No. This site is one of the most reliable sites on the interwebs. I hardly ever have a problem loading it.
Wait . . . were you asking about “Balloon Juice” or everyone’s favorite site “WordPress > Error”?
(sorry Mr. Cole! couldn’t resist)
smiley
New here, eh? John is aware of the problems and doesn’t like to hear complaining about it.
LarryB
Glenn Greenwald weighs in on the hypocrisy of the Right’s hissy fit over this little prank:
As always, it’s worth reading the whole thing.
Stuck in the Fun House
Do not touch the dial, the problems you are having are not in your computer. You have entered the Balloon Juice.
Paul L.
I await the outrage here on the chilling effect on Free Speech if some Reicht-winger posts the identity of the Palin email hacker.
That and accusing of the Reicht-wing of picking on the hacker as John did with Graeme Frost.
demimondian
Of course, given that John has already expressed his fury about the break-in, your claim is perhaps a little la…
Oh, look! A jackalope!
Punchy
Fix’zilled my bizzle.
dslak
Why no mention of the Duke Lacrosse case?
whocoodanode
Mr. Cole is providing his diligent readers with a brilliant piece of performance art, sadly unrecognized as such. He is illustrating in real-time how Conservative governance works.
1) Ignore the problem
2) Ignore other people’s viewpoints/advice/suffering regarding the problem
3) In wild panic throw random solutions at the problem
4) Bitch at “complainers” and go back to ignoring the problem
Thanks Mr. Cole. And for his finale, Mr. WordPress-Error will demonstrate the final Conservative denoument (until people forget yet again):
5) Become laughingstock and poster child for said problem.
Brilliant work, sir. Well done.
Paul L.
John is not the only voice here.
Glennzilla and his acolytes will condemn pursing/exposing the hacker as the right-wing “witchhunt”.
John S.
You fucking moron.
Just because you right-wingers are hypocrites on just about EVERYTHING doesn’t mean the rest of us are. The same people that were upset about the Democrats capitulating on FISA (due to privacy concerns) are also not thrilled that a government employee had their email hacked (although it certainly is poetic justice for the party of snooping). Everything isn’t about political convenience.
That said, it was totally reckless for Palin to be conducting business through a Yahoo account.
r€nato
Instead of predicting what Glennzilla will do, you could try going over to Salon.com and reading what he wrote about it.
Then you could come back here and apologize for being such an asshole, and then we’ll explain to you the difference between a criminal act committed by a random group of computer geeks with no known political motivation, and stalking inspired by a political blogger determined to exact mob justice on a child.
SGEW
Not true. It is well established that 4chan supports Bong Hits 4 Jesus.
John S.
Won’t happen. Paul L. chooses to be an unprincipled GOP hack, and therefore has no grasp on reality, as further indicated by the Great Orange Satan himself:
You see! Glenzilla’s acolyte condemns exposing the…
Tony J
It’s been mentioned elsewhere that, whatever else happens regarding the hacking of Palin’s Yahoo account, you can bet the farm on the McPalin Campaign, a) Wiping every copy of the e-mails they can find on the grounds that “It would be irresponsible not to”, and b) Claiming that anything incriminating revealed in the e-mails they can’t wipe should be ignored, on the grounds that “Liberal web-ninjas have obviously inserted them to make the Governor look bad”.
I’d expect both of these things to occur within the next few days, backed by a cacophany of “Waaaahhhh! Privacy is a Konstitutional Right! Why do these Libtards hate America?“
r€nato
I am a lot more concerned about the government prying into my email than a random group of hackers. At least the hackers are far, far more likely to be prosecuted and don’t have the resources of the CIA, NSA, DoJ etc standing behind them.
A dozen Republicans commit murder, a single Democrat jaywalks, and a wingnut says, ‘see? Democrats are just as bad as Republicans! Win!’
Bootlegger
Oh the beauty of the End Times. It seems that at least one member of the Christ Death Cult casts Obama as the Antichrist and Palin as the Savior.
Dammit, I wanted to be the Antichrist! Can I settle for Lord of the Flies?
SGEW
Don’t worry about it. Don’t you know that Tim LaHaye, creator of the “Left Behind” series, has publicly stated that Obama isn’t the Antichrist?
Christian News Wire:
So, as long as Barack Hussein Saddam Osama Bin Satan is an American, there’s no problem.
And, as has been said repeatedly, Obama is an American . . . AS FAR AS WE KNOW!!1eleven!
bootlegger
I read that story when it came out. But the thing of it is, according to the Christ Death Cult’s legends, the Antichrist is a great Deceiver who can make people see things that aren’t really there. So, you wee, LaHaye was mind-controlled by Obama to write that.
SGEW
Of course! It’s all so clear now!
Hey gabba gabba hey.
Chris Johnson
Yeah, right. That was Anonymous. Anonymous pokes SCIENTOLOGY with sticks to see what will happen. Compared to that, rightwingers are wusses.
Tsulagi
Leaving aside the coverup of his birth records, was Hawaii a state when the Bible was written? I think not. Could also explain why he doesn’t wear an American flag lapel pin. It’s like holy water.
PeterJ
Obama’s mom is sending him emails from heaven? Maybe he really is “The One”(tm)?
Also, I find it a bit sad that they have to rely on VHS in the afterlife…