Archive for the ‘tech’ Category

Yup I’d hire a lawyer too if someone hacked my twitter account

Posted: May 30, 2011 by datechguy in media, politics, tech, the courts
Tags: , , ,

…and then decide not to comment.

After all isn’t this what everyone does?

A spokesman for Rep. Anthony Weiner, New York Democrat, told The Daily Caller the Congressman’s team has “retained counsel” and is exploring the “proper next steps” after his official Twitter account posted a picture of a man’s erect penis underneath gray boxer shorts. The internet-driven scandal has come to be known online as “#Weinergate,” a pun on the Congressman’s last name.

I don’t claim to be a law expert if I had a client that wanted advice on what to do if someone hacked my account, the legal conversation I would have would be in two sentences:

“Call the police, that will be $1000.”

Now I’m sure that Mr. Weiner’s counsel not being a fool is going to allow Rep Weiner to pay him big bucks for as long as possible, but rep Weiner’s decision to go this route is going to mean something else to even non-twitter familiar people. It certainly drew a reaction from Stacy McCain.

There are direct questions that Rep Weiner has chosen not to answer at this point. He retaining of a lawyer means that no answers will be forthcoming. This certainly does not bode well in terms of appearances and a media savvy congressman would know this.

One must conclude that given the choice of :

A: answering direct questions

OR

B: Taking actions that would cause reasonable people to conclude he is hiding something.

…Congressman Weiner has decided the less damaging action to his future ambitions is the later.

There is every possibility that Anthony Weiner will come out of this with a whole skin so to speak, but this latest action means that it will come at a cost in the minds of voters , apparently he is counting on the MSM to cover this with the same due diligence that they give any potential scandal that doesn’t involve a republican.

Update: Not to worry Anthony, you have Charles Johnson in your corner. That must bring a sigh of relief. Particularly when you are dealing with some masterful snark from Ace of Spades HQ:

…perhaps I’m being too hard on Congressman Weiner. I mean every PSA I’ve ever seen about crimes always urges people that if you are the victim of a crime or see one committed you should immediately call the cops retain counsel to help you consider your options.

I bet the idiot who illegally accessed Palin’s emails wishes he’d picked on Weiner instead. She called the cops but apparently Weiner is more forgiving of being violated.

Yup Rep Weiner is much too sophisticated to merely go after the “hacker” in court like that hick Sarah Palin did.

Update 2: A report on CNN showed Weiner in person claiming it was a hacker and pooh poohing it. That’s important. Strangely enough nobody at CNN thought to ask why the lady in question was being followed by Weiner. As for the continued “distraction” business, I remember hearing something like that back in the late 90′s from another democratic pol who loved the camera.

Update 3: Two days Two instalanches, and I suspect tomorrow will be even bigger

Hey MSM any old Twit(erer) understands what Rep Weiner’s numbers mean

Posted: May 29, 2011 by datechguy in politics, tech, twitter
Tags: , ,

by Datechguy | May 29th, 2011

I came to twitter very late in the game, so unlike many bloggers both bigger and smaller than me, my total number of followers is very small (787 as of this morning). To give you an idea of how that stands with someone of some celebrity; Joe Scarborough of MSNBC who I write about a bit has over 100,000 followers (100,935 to be exact as of this morning).

As a person relatively new to media I remember the first time a major paper started following me (NY Post) it was a big deal.

On May 27th I picked up Katheryn Jean Lopez of National Review as a follower and yesterday I picked up blogger and radio host Dana Loesch. I met Dana and her husband at CPAC I’ve never met Kathryn but I was extremely pleased to have them both follow me since it will allow me to contact them privately about appearing on my radio show DaTechGuy on DaRadio (AM 830 WCRN Worcester).

I also only follow 323 people as a rule I try to follow about half the number of people who follow me. That generates a plenty big twitter stream. I simply can’t see how people keep up with following thousands of people. To continue the above example; Joe Scarborough only follows 394 people. Keep that number in mind as it is important.

Now compared to Joe Scarborough I’m a person of very little celebrity. I’ve been blogging for maybe 2 1/2 years with a total of a bit over 550k hits overall between the old and the current blog. I’ve have had a radio show on a 50,000 Watt Station heard in 6 states for about 6 months. In Fitchburg Mass. that a big deal, in Worcester county it matters. In DC or NY that means very little.

By comparison Joe Scarborough served in congress, has a Morning Show on MSNBC that is watched by an awful lot of people. Writes a weekly commentary and is known by movers and shakers all over the country.

Why is this important? Well I just “followed” Beulah Garrett @beulahgg who mentioned me in a tweet a few hours ago. She will likely notice that I did so, she may or may not look at my profile and may or may not be impressed; as a great-grandmother she has likely seen enough that it takes more than me to impress her.

Now Let’s say Joe Scarborough choose to follow Ms. Garrett. Joe has over 100k followers, if he choose to follow Ms.Garrett I suspect she would take a lot more notice and might even be impressed.

What does Joe Scarborough and who follows or doesn’t follow me or Ms. Garrett have to do with Congressman Anthony Weiner of NY 9th district and his claim that someone hacked his twitter and photo accounts to send a photo of an erect penis in underwear to a young lady? Everything!

Congressman Weiner’s district is in NY. He is a man of some national prominence, a liberal who is not afraid of taking on conservatives directly. The phone message at his national office is personable and friendly. He is a regular guest on Morning Joe and is not shy about appearing anywhere. His national prominence dwarfs mine of course.

As of this moment 10:03 a.m. EST he has over 45K followers (45737 to be exact) I’m not one of them. He also follows only 194 people.

Until 48 hours ago one of those people was Genette Nicole Cordova tweetname @Gennette Noble the young lady who is at the center of this interesting event.

Just to remind you. Gennette Noble Gennette Nicole Cordova is a 21-year-old college student in Seattle Washington. She writes for the college newspaper. She seems a fairly attractive young girl and until 24 hours ago I knew absolutely nothing about her. I doubt many people on the net did. It would be fair to say that her prominence compared to me is of the same proportion of my prominence compared to Joe Scarborough.

Yet until 48 hours ago she was one of the under 200 people Congressman Wiener followed on Twitter.

Run that through your head for a second.

In the last 24 hours her facebook account has disappeared. Her twitter account have disappeared. Her byline has disappeared from college papers. This shows someone is taking great pains to remove her from the net.

If one wants to believe the congressman’s story one can say she is just trying to avoid further unwanted publicity. One might be able to rationalize that.

One can’t rationalize the fact that until all of this came out, a New York Congressman of some national prominence was following her on twitter. I’m 48 years old and was impressed by being followed by Dana Loesch and Kathryn Lopez tell me how impressed a 20 something year old college girl would be by being followed by a congressman 3000 miles away?

Any person who uses twitter understands with this means. They also know two other things:

1. If two people follow each other on twitter they can send private messages unseen by others

2..The difference between a private message and a public one is two characters

@rsmccain This message is public

d rsmccain this message is private

The difference is a “@” sign and the letter “d”

This is why the MSM is desperate to kill this quickly, that is why the left side of the sphere will be crying Andrew Breitbart till their voices grow horse hoarse, it’s also why this scandal will not be able to be contained by the left.

Joe Scarborough knows twitter, he also knows Andrew Weiner, if he chooses to look at the follower numbers he will know what it means. That bad for Anthony Weiner, the left and the MSM.

What’s worse for them? There are millions of people who use twitter who have absolutely no interest in politics, who when they see the numbers concerning followers also will understand exactly what it means.

The left and Rep Weiner have one long weekend to decide how they are going to handle this. I don’t envy them. They might be able to persuade the media to leave it alone but the meaning and details of this scandal can be understood by millions of people in 140 characters or less.

Update: Two quick things, Ace of Spades notes that at the time this broke Rep Weiner only followed 91 people, not the just under 200 people he follows now and asks.

What could possibly cause a big macher Congressman decide to follow a kid in college?

The photo at the link contains both reasons.

Secondly I am reminded of Robert Stacy McCain’s a reporter of National prominence who has covered the powerful for years reaction when Alyssa Milano re-tweeted him:

That’s how unusual it is for a nationally known reporter to re-tweeted by Alyssa Milano (and he worked hard for that re-tweet ,) how much less likely is it for a college student on a school paper to be followed by a congressman in NY?

Update 2: Instalanche! The perfect thing way to end a blog’s month, thanks Glenn. Hey Pundit readers you will want to check out yesterday’s radio show with news about a possible gop primary opponent to Scott Brown & my thoughts on Palin. With comedian Steven Crowder scheduled for next week I wonder if there is something funny in the news we can talk about?

Update 3: Somehow missed a piece of her name, thanks to Janetoo for catching it.

Note this piece was recovered from the internet archive and thus the comments aren’t there but you can read them at the wayback machine here.

Anthony Weiner and how to be a reporter

Posted: May 28, 2011 by datechguy in politics, tech
Tags: , ,

by Datechguy | May 28th, 2011

Our lesson for today on “How to be a Journalist” comes from Robert Stacy McCain.

Today word came out that there was an interesting tweet from the account of Representative Anthony Weiner that included a picture that was shall we say odd for a married congressman directed to a particular account on twitter.

Shortly after this came out Lee Stranaham at Patterico’s site noticed some interesting deletions:

So, around the same time he was tweeting about hockey, he sends the underwear photos to that woman at @GennetteNicole. Don’t bother looking there, though. Rep. Weiner’s photos are all erased. And Gennette seems to have deleted her entire Twitter account. And, it seems, her Facebook account.

Rep Weiner claims his account was hacked but the sudden deletion of the Twitter and Facebook accounts of the at the time unknown lady in question are interesting too.

The Daily Kos, being the Daily Kos has instantly decided that Andrew Breitbart is to blame (much in the same way that Sarah Palin is apparently to blame for the failure of Meagan McCain’s love life) and has started to spin that is is yet “another Breitbart lie” Which translated into human speak means: “A story we want the MSM to ignore.”

Enter Robert Stacy McCain, who has a history of not jumping to conclusions. Within a few hours he had identified the young lady in question and has asked actual relevant questions:

Was Rep. Weiner exchanging online messages with Ms. Cordova? If so, why? If this is all just a misunderstanding — if Rep. Weiner was the victim of hackers — why was Ms. Cordova the recipient of that message? Why would a hacker randomly select a student journalist in Washington State to send that to?

The congressman’s office can either answer those questions — and answer them PDQ — or else wait until every political reporter on the West Coast is camped out in front of Ms. Cordova’s house.

Mediate weighed in attacking Breitbart site meanwhile Stacy contacted Andrew directly and in the course of their conversation the following additional question arose?

But here is a question Breitbart posed during our phone conversation: If someone hacked Rep. Weiner’s online accounts, isn’t that a crime? Isn’t it, indeed, a national security threat?

OK, so has Rep. Weiner reported this crime to the police? Is the FBI investigating? When will we have a press conference at which Rep. Weiner vows to get to bottom of this crime against him, and bring the perpetrators to justice?

There is a dog there, you see. And as Sherlock Holmes might point out, that dog is not barking.

As for what I think? I’m not sure, it would be idiocy for a rep to do this but NY-26 was not too long ago and I’ve given up thinking that when it comes to sex congressional brains engage, but from the reaction of the left I think they believe it.

Consider: If this was all hokum the smart thing to do would be to wait, let the right stick out its collective neck and then when it turns out to be smoke and mirrors, or a hacking or even something else (Stacy has theorized an aide in his office who might have been pretending to be the congressman in order to score, that would make some sense) then they could demand massive retractions and apologies all around.

Yet instead the left has decided to play the “Andrew Breitbart can’t be trusted so you must ignore this story” card. This smacks of desperation. Presumably the left would have contacts with Rep Weiner’s office and would be able to confirm his story fairly easily. Yet instead of doing this, they are hitting Breitbart.

This reaction, more than anything else, speaks volumes.

So since Stacy is giving reporting lessons I took the liberty of calling congressman Weiner’s office, the recorded messaged referred me to a press number to call after hours. I called the number and the gentleman named Joe who answered claimed I had the wrong number so I called back the congressman’s office to confirm the number in question (it was correct) and called the press number again. It now goes directly to voice mail. I left my name and home and cell numbers at both locations, and I’ll let you know if anything pans out, but I found that reaction…interesting.

Update: No call back but Stacy’s Spectator article is a great example of straight news as well.

DaTechGuy in Da New York Post

Posted: May 1, 2011 by datechguy in media, politics, tech
Tags: , , , ,

On Saturday as my post Any old Twit(erer) understands what Weiner’s number mean was driving my traffic to the best day since I moved from the old blog I got an e-mail from the NY Post asking if I would be interested in submitting an opinion piece for their paper on Weinergate.

It Ran today. A peek:

In the New York of the late 1800s, Boss Tweed famously complained about Thomas Nast cartoons: Though many immigrants in the city couldn’t read, even the illiterate could understand “those damn pictures.” Rep. Anthony Weiner and his staff now face a similar problem.

Read the Whole thing

Update: Rush Limbaugh linked to the Post Article today. I think that rates an OMG!

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