A Seattle Times editor says the newspaper is “outraged” by the revelation that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had apparently created a fake Seattle Times news story as part of an investigation.
According to a document obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the FBI’s Seattle office fabricated a news story and a fake Seattle Times page to gain access to the computer of a suspect in a series of bomb threats made to a regional high school in 2007.
The Seattle Times said it had just learned of the incident after the American Civil Liberties Union’s principal technologist Christopher Sogohian tweeted about the program on Monday.
“We are outraged that the FBI, with the apparent assistance of the US attorney’s office, misappropriated the name of the Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect,” said Seattle Times editor Kathy Best. “Not only does that cross a line, it erases it.”
“Our reputation and our ability to do our job as a government watchdog are based on trust. Nothing is more fundamental to that trust than our independence – from law enforcement, from government, from corporations and from all other special interests,” Best said. “The FBI’s actions, taken without our knowledge, traded on our reputation and put it at peril.”
A story about the bomb threats and a link to the page was sent to the suspect’s MySpace account, complete with information on how to subscribe to or run advertising in the Seattle Times, suggesting it was from an official source. Once the suspect clicked on the link, FBI agents could access the suspect’s location and internet protocol information
The software attached to the sham link is known as CIPAV (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier). The EFF posted 172 pages on how the program was used in Seattle and a case in Florida.
A 15-year-old suspect was arrested and convicted for making the threats. The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office, Frank Montoya Jr, defended the tactic in a statement.
“We identified a specific subject of an investigation and used a technique that we deemed would be effective in preventing a possible act of violence in a school setting. Use of that type of technique happens in very rare circumstances and only when there is sufficient reason to believe it could be successful in resolving a threat. We were fortunate that information provided by the public gave us the opportunity to step in to a potentially dangerous situation before it was too late.”
The mock Seattle Times story was attributed to the Associated Press, which condemned the FBI’s actions. “We are extremely concerned and find it unacceptable that the FBI misappropriated the name of the Associated Press and published a false story attributed to AP,” said the AP’s director of media relations, Paul Colford. “This ploy violated AP’s name and undermined AP’s credibility.”
