Friday, January 23

Remember This Story? The Computer Break-In? Hmmm?

Yeah, it's been met with the same ennui the "liberal" press gives stories like these because they're still too busy analyzing the never-ending Screamin' Dean story and how it's been skewered by the late-night comedians and sampled on the internet and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

For the six of us still interested in this illegal high-tech break-in, here's an update.

GOP downplays reading of memos
'Fact sheet' asserts no rules, laws broken
By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff, 1/23/2004

WASHINGTON -- Although Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William Pickle's investigation into GOP surveillance of Democratic Judiciary Committee communications from 2002 to 2003 is not yet complete, Republicans are preemptively trying to head off any criminal charges or even ethics complaints in the Senate or the D.C. Bar.

The Committee for Justice, headed by C. Boyden Gray, a former senior White House counsel during the first Bush administration, this week began circulating a "fact sheet" arguing that no rules or laws were broken by Republican staffers who exploited a computer glitch on a shared server that allowed them to access memos written by their Democratic counterparts without having to enter a password.

However, Democrats, including Beryl Howell, a former general counsel for the Judiciary Committee who left the Hill a year ago and now runs the D.C. office of the cybersecurity consulting firm Stroz Friedberg, were quick to dispute each of the major points advanced by the Committee for Justice.

Said Howell: "Just because you can do it doesn't mean it's right, doesn't mean it's ethical, and doesn't mean it's legal."
Gray responded, "Yeah, but Howard Dean was really loud Monday night."

(Look, folks, I'm just trying to draw the press' attention to this story somehow.)