what the hell does "backed up" the link. Clearly it does not mean they just clicked on the link. This is way worse than going in an open door. This is like leaving something in the door jamb so the door doesn't close. Clearly they knew they were in an area they weren't supposed to be. They downloaded 4 hours of private information, culled it for what they thought would be the worst, then provided it to the LA Times, who probably just relayed it as anonymous source. These are the people that revile Nixon for Watergate, tell me the difference....

I completely disagree. If we follow Weintraub's reasoning, that means if I forget and leave my front door unlocked, you have the legal right to burgarize the joint.

Do you mean to tell me that if someone comes into your home, without your permission and against your wishes that they are not

Guests?

Sorry Dafydd that was too good to pass up ;-)

And the worst they could come up from four hours of tape was....him calling a woman hot-blooded? Perhaps implying that her racial make-up made her that way? Sheesh.

This from the party that decried the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which at least had a veneer of criminality associated with it? Sheesh again.

Also, as my Mother taught me, if everything you are doing in on the up and up(stealing stuff off a website), why did you hide that you did it (submit it to a newspaper anonymously)?

I'm getting real tired of the media and their open mike follies. When will they realize that we all say and do things in private that we later regret, that we all misspeak? Give it a rest already.

The Phil Angelides' campaign went through the proper channels, and got a FISA Court approval.

Bloggers try that sort of thing all the time to ID trolls.

According to the Unwritten Geek Code, emails and websites are publications of data to the whole world. If one is inartful enough to be unaware of the total information they are publishing, one must take the consequences. It's the e-quivalent of sending an anonymous note scribbled on the back of your business card-D'oh!

However, according to the same Unwritten Geek Code, the user should be open about how he got the data. Quite open. Boastful, in fact.

Angelides tried to hide. For shame, geek.

I vote for real old-fashioned hacking -- an inside source giving access. What would such a recording be doing on a (not merely publicly accessible) website in the first place? I mean, do you upload your kitchen-table discussions with your wife to this site, Dafydd?

...does not release Democrats from the necessity to act in a morally responsible way...

What will you want next? Kosher homosexuality? 3,000 Horsepower electric lawnmowers? Moonbats to deny that THIS COUNTRY IS IN THE HANDS OF THE NAZI Party?!?!?!?!?!

Heh.

Firstly, I'm not completely sure I agree with the open door metaphor. This, to me, is more like failing to put "Authorised personnel only" signs on doors to private offices in a building which welcomes the public in to parts of it (say a restaurant, shop or gallery). As I understand it all they did was go from http://www.host.com/some/path/pressrelease.htm to http://www.host.com/some/path/ and discover that instead of an index page or permission denied notice it contained a directory listing. And amongst the files listed were this particular bit of audio.

If you don't want access to these bits then you need to put up the sign that says "Private keep out" because the assumption is that a website is there for people to read and explore. Just as a gallery/museum/library is. If you don't want people to wander through your office in search of the toilets then you put up sings to make it clear that the offices are private and the toilets are over there. The same applies here IMO.

What I don't understand is why the democrats didn't just send the URL http://www.host.com/some/path/ to the LA Times and say hey you might want to look at the WAV file that we found here - check what is said at XX minutes in. Presumably they assume that the LA Times journalists aren't up to the task of navigating the web or playing audio files.

One also wonders what happens when someone does the same thing to a democrat website - say that of Mr Angilides? I really hope he's got his web security perfect because if not he's going to end up defending some document found on his site that he didn't wish to be well known... or even (whisper it) a document planted there by some malicious opponent

Democrats behave in an ethical manner? They don't have to, their intentions are pure. That makes it OK to pretend to be somebody else to get Michael Steele's credit report.

But not OK to listen in on the phone calls of people who are talking with people who are trying to kill us.

Normally I would agree with the democrats - but they set the precedent a couple of years ago when they had a republican staffer fired and charged with hacking (IIRC) for distributing publicly viewable files from the Democrat's file servers in Congress.

So, they lit the petard, let them be hoist by it!

http://www.slate.com/id/2095770/

This is just another example of the republican theocracy decending on America. That Shwarzeneger would entrap the democrats by leaving stuff on his web site shows how low the republicans have sunk in their desire to do away with all civil liberties. Thank goodness that the democrats are here to fight the republican desire to spy on everyone by viligintly looking through other peoples computers.

Dirty Dingus, you couldn't be more wrong. Providing a link with directions myserver/path/pressrelease does not give license to go through myserver even if you can type myserver/ a million combinations to find the directory, then find what is on it.... If I tell you to stop by my house and pick up something I borrowed, it does not give you license to enter my house and search for whatever you want. This is new technological area, but the ethics are as old as man, and very simple. Dems want to protect conversations with terrorists, but they do not want to protect an elected officials private documents. How you triangulate that Watergate and NSA wiretapping are our nation's worst transgressions, but this is legal and ok.....

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