slashdot_commentator's Journal: Computer Espionage in the US Senate Judiciary

What do you do when you just can't get your co-workers to see eye-to-eye with you? The Boston Globe reports that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee stole confidential memos from their Democratic counterparts by cracking into their computer files. The memos highlighted Democratic strategies concerning Republican Judicial nominees. Its suspected that some of them were leaked to Republican shill Robert Novak, who then disclosed their contents in a February 2003 column.

What can we learn from Republicans when accused of cracking?

(Blame the victim.)

"As the extent to which Democratic communications were monitored came into sharper focus, Republicans yesterday offered a new defense. They said that in the summer of 2002, their computer technician informed his Democratic counterpart of the glitch, but Democrats did nothing to fix the problem."

(Feign ignorance and indignation.)

"Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, made a preliminary inquiry and described himself as "mortified that this improper, unethical and simply unacceptable breach of confidential files may have occurred on my watch."

("I'm shocked, *shocked* to find cracking in this establishment." "Here are their memos." "Ah, thank you...")

Dayam

[slashdot_commentator]

Really screwed the pooch on that one. It turned out the story was submitted [slashdot.org] 6 hours ago. Somehow I missed it on my last screen update. Oh well. There should be an option to retract submissions...