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Notes -
Twitter Files 7
Another Twitter Files post: Link
Michael Shellenberger writes this one, arguing that the FBI worked hard to prime social media platforms into thinking a hacked release would come out prior to the 2020 election. He writes the following.
The FBI's regular meetings with people like Yoel Roth were characterized by the latter as telling him that state actors might try a "hack and leak" operation prior to the election.
The FBI was aware that there wasn't anything to go by on this claim, as Special Agent Elvis Chan testified.
Twitter found no evidence of significant Russian/foreign interference on the platform, and Roth repeatedly informed Chan/the FBI on multiple occasions about this.
Twitter repeatedly resisted efforts by the FBI to get data outside the normal search warrant process and was aware that the FBI was trying to probe a lot.
The FBI eventually got temporary clearances to share top-secret info with Twitter executives regarding APT28, a Russian hacking organization. Roth described himself as being "primed primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out."
Former FBI employees were so numerous at Twitter that they had their own internal slack channels.
In September 2020, Roth and others partook of a tabletop exercise to simulate a "hack and dump" operation regarding the Biden campaign. The goal was apparently to "shape" how the media would respond.
When the Hunter Biden leak finally happened, Roth would argue that it appeared more like a subtle leak, since nothing appeared in clear violation of the rules. Jim Baker would respond that it seemed hacked, so Twitter was reasonable in suppressing it until more information came out. But this is nearly impossible, since the FBI's subpoena for the laptop was attached to the NYPost article.
Roth appeared to buy this story now, and in an email said that it was likely that hacked materials were uploaded to the laptop and given to the shop.
There is a pattern of the FBI trying to warn elected officials with a goal of leaking to the news. They did this with Senators Grassley and Johnson, who were investigating and believed that it compromised their credibility. Jim Baker was apparently investigated twice for leaking information (in 2017 and 2019).
As a reminder, the above is what he's arguing, not what I think is necessarily true.
From what I can see, it appears the FBI was very insistent upon the possibility of a 2016 DNC-style hack. I don't think this is necessarily unreasonable until the election is settled - that the hack didn't happen doesn't mean you could conclude it wouldn't were you in the months leading up to the election.
Far more damning is the attempts at getting Twitter's information outside the normal search warrant process. Twitter and its staff are vindicated in this regard, they appear to not have given in to the FBI's requests in 2020. A caveat to this, however, is that we don't necessarily know why they shut off this access in the first place, and how long it was open before that.
A secondary objection of mine is the blurring of public and private boundary with how intelligence officials and agencies were coordinating with and sharing classified information with these companies in an effort to get them on-board with doing work for the FBI. It's difficult to articulate what I precisely find problematic here. The closest I could come to explaining my feelings here is that I don't want these people to ever be more than formal acquaintances because it ends up reducing the chance of them acting as independent stations of power.
They literally had a hack and dump scenario with Hunter Biden. Isnt that a bit of a smoking gun?
Except it wasn't a Hack and Dump, while yes it was widely reported as such at the time, it turns out that Hunter Biden is exactly the sort of coked-out idiot to leave his laptop full of incriminating evidence at the service desk and then forget to pick it up.
Strictly that doesn't prevent it being hacked information, or information obtained illegally.
"The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) was enacted in 1986 and prohibits accessing a computer without authorization, or in excess of authorization. "
If permission was given for the purposes of data retrieval, even after abandonment of the device recovering any data from a device in excess of the authorization given may well fall under relevant Federal or state laws. You can be in a position where the abandoned property becomes yours, but the data on it does not.
"So, was Hunter Biden’s email “hacked?” Yes, in the sense that it was read and disseminated without his knowledge or consent. But under the law? Magic 8 ball says, “situation unclear. Ask again later…”"
It's not as straight forward as saying he was hacked, but it is also not clear that he wasn't.
This has nothing to do with the reasons the story was squashed (other than to give a figleaf), but it isn't actually super clear cut as to whether it would fall under Delaware's Computer crime laws as hacking. It also depends if local copies of email were accessed or his online accounts were accessed through stored passwords.
If you take a computer to a repair place , give them your passwords to help with repair and they clone your drive and publish your emails online, they probably have hacked your data as described in the various statutes, and they probably can be prosecuted. And you can probably call it a Hack and dump. If they do it after you abandon it, the situation is unclear. In other words the fig leaf is real, the question is (ahem) how big it is in actuality.
My recollection was that the terms of NY property abandonment law, under which the laptop was left at the shop with IIRC an outstanding bill, effectively transferred ownership to the shop. At that point, the from whom part of the required authorization becomes germane: if you put your files on (now) my computer, I don't think you can claim it's a crime for me to look at or possibly[1] redistribute them. On the other hand, if I use your existing session token on (now) my computer to access your account on a different computer (say, GMail), it's quite plausibly still a crime.
On the other hand, I'd agree it certainly raises some interesting legal questions.
[1] I could imagine a very niche argument for copyright or likeness concerns, but I'm not aware of anyone successfully using copyright to prevent the publication of embarrassing materials, although I may well be missing an example there. Regardless, this would (typically) be a civil matter. "Revenge porn" laws might be relevant, but I'm not aware of the details for this case.
Yes, this would be hacking. Though lame and low effort. Has this been claimed? I've not seen this claim.
Those further civil claims would be better made against the actual publishers.
Isn't the technicians narrative that like the geek squad and child porn, he was concerned by his discovery, first went to the FBI, only when he perceived inaction he went to the press and Rudy Guliani.
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