Congressman Weiner's inappropriate tweet

[Neally]

Anyone who thinks someone is guilty until they prove themselves innocent.

I feel like I've already made this point abundantly clear.

That would make prosecutors and police perverts. Thanks for making that abundantly clear.

What you seem to fail to understand, though, is that while you and I as individuals are free to assume a person is innocent or guilty based on whatever silly standard we choose -- such as the I think he was acting weird, 'cause he didn't do what I think he should have done standard that you're embracing -- police and prosecutors in their official capacities are not.

So? My critique was of his casting as "perverse" anyone that thinks someone is guilty--holding the world to the presumption of innocent standard that is applied to the court.

Johnny karate made a very sensible suggestion: look at the track record for the I think he was acting weird, so he must be guilty method and see how many successful arrests, indictments, and prosecutions have been based on it.

It's an idiotic suggestion as there is no data and no way to analyze it. Both the left, right, and non-partisan security experts have criticized Weiner's handling of the event so it's inaccurate to keep repeating the claim that "he didn't do it the way I think it should have been done". I have not perpetuated the media interest in this. Weiner has no one to blame but himself.

So if Weiner had been using TweetDeck that day, why would Wolfe and Stack not be aware of this?

They could have. As the article said, and has been mentioned here now several times, this doesn't eliminate the possibility that the account was hacked. Again it just means that the hacker(s) would have to have been aware that the tweet would have been sent through TweetDeck in order to further make it appear to legitimately have come from Weiner. The truth is but 15 minutes away, but Weiner doesn't seem to want that to come out.

 

[Nova Land]

... a "conspiracy" that attempted to discover and reveal the truth would hardly deserve that title, would it?

If you prefer the term secret clique to conspiracy I'll be happy to use that term instead. Or, if secret clique upsets your sensibilities as well, let me know what term you would prefer and if it's a reasonable term I can try to use that in future posts. It's not the label that we put on them that's my first concern; it's what they were doing.

We are talking about a secret clique which was contacting under-age girls without their parents knowledge or permission, and trying to engage them in talk of sexual matters. Perhaps you feel (as they apparently did) that the end justifies the means. I don't. I think it is worth knowing about what they were doing under the cloak of secrecy and lifting that cloak to let in some light.

Do you deny that this secret clique was contacting under-age girls, despite the evidence that they were?

Do you deny that this secret clique were trying to discuss sexual matters with these girls, despite the evidence that they were?

Do you deny that this secret clique were doing this without having contacted or gotten permission from the girls' parents, despite the evidence that they were?

Do you deny that this secret clique was doing this in a harassing manner, which was unwanted by the girls being pursued this way, despite the evidence that they were?

Do you deny that this secret clique continued to pursue and harass these girls despite the fact that they were told by all the girls who were actually followers of Weiner that nothing improper was going on?

(The only person they were in touch with who told them there was something improper going on was someone not even following Weiner. Yet they had been tweeting those false charges against Weiner -- and getting others such as Breitbart to join in the tweeting of those false charges -- well before the crotch shot incident occurred. You don't find that improper and worth exposing to light?)

We have a case here where we know for a fact that a group of people -- among whose number are Dan Wolfe and Michael Stack -- were behaving improperly. For some reason you want to completely ignore that and focus instead solely on someone for whom we have as yet no evidence of improper behavior.

I certainly hope this matter is investigated, and that everyone involved who has behaved in an improperly is exposed. And when we have people whom we know have been evasive, have lied, and have behaved improperly in relation to the matter in question it makes sense to focus some effort on trying to get to the truth behind their evasions, lies, and improper conduct. I don't understand why you want to turn a blind eye to this.

 

[tyr_13]

I just happen to think the evidence points to the fact that he tweeted a picture of his junk publicly by accident because he is not technically savvy.

That's a reasonable speculation, and increasingly supported by evidence. It would well explain most of the details. It could also be that he was trying to send it to the coed. Or more facts could present themselves.

 

[BobTheDonkey]

That's a reasonable speculation, and increasingly supported by evidence. It would well explain most of the details. It could also be that he was trying to send it to the coed. Or more facts could present themselves.

What evidence?

 

[tyr_13]

What evidence?

Sorry, fits with what the evidence shows.

 

[Nova Land]

That's a reasonable speculation, and increasingly supported by evidence.

No. It's a reasonable speculation, but it is not as yet a theory that is supported by evidence. Rather, it is a theory that is not yet clearly contradicted by the evidence. There is a difference.

Often there are two or more competing theories which could explain an event. Ideally evidence comes to light which indicates one is true or which indicates the other is false.

In this case the tweet in question could have been sent by Weiner; or it could have been sent by an outsider such as Wolfe or Stack. Someone seeing one of these people send the tweet in question would be strong evidence in support of one theory or the other. Someone seeing one of these people clearly engaged in some different activity at the time the tweet went out would be strong evidence contradicting one theory or the other. Various other kinds of evidence could prove or disprove one of the theories. But we don't have anything like that.

There are things Weiner has done which would fit well with the theory that he caused the tweet to be sent. There are things Wolfe and Stack have done which would fit well with the theory that one of them caused the tweet to be sent. These are likely the kind of things you are talking about when you say there is evidence that Weiner did send the tweet.

If you are aware of any substantive evidence that Weiner sent the tweet, could you state what it is? Because if the kind of thing I think you're talking about is to be labeled as evidence that Weiner caused the tweet to be sent, we need to be careful to label things as evidence that Wolfe or Stack sent it. Consistency in language, so as not to give the wrong impression, is important here.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

What evidence?

http://wireupdate.com/wires/17945/exclusive-documents-show-tweetdeck-use-in-weiner-lewd-photo-tweet/

This seems to be evidence from a third party non-partisan site that the hockey tweet and the picture tweet were both posted from tweetdeck, which seems to rule out the whole 'hack' theory.

It does not mean that yfrog did not have a gaping security hole, and it does not necessarily mean that Wieners FB and twitter account were not hacked.

 

[Nova Land]

Sorry, fits with what the evidence shows.

Ah, sorry. I see that you posted in short form what I just posted in long form -- and you did so 10 minutes before I got that post composed and posted. I should have checked more carefully, before pressing the submit button, to see if there were additional posts. But I am glad we are in agreement on the language for this.

 

[johnny karate]

That would make prosecutors and police perverts. Thanks for making that abundantly clear.

I have absolutely no idea what you're on about.

At no point during a criminal investigation (at least in the American legal system) do the police, prosecutors or anyone else have a presumption of guilt with the expectation the accused must prove their innocence.

So? My critique was of his casting as "perverse" anyone that thinks someone is guilty--holding the world to the presumption of innocent standard that is applied to the court.

Now I'm beginning to see the problem. You're truncating my original statement in order to construct some idiotic straw man to sanctimoniously rail against. I won't say this indicates dishonesty on your part, but it certainly provides an interesting insight into your thought process.

For the record, here's my original statement. The part you repeatedly keep leaving out has been bolded for you convenience:

What a perverted world view and sense of justice it must take to assume someone is guilty until proven innocent.

For any further information on how this particular aspect of the U.S. criminal justice system works, I suggest you consult a grade school civics textbook.

 

[Noztradamus]

Originally Posted by TheL8Elvis
I just happen to think the evidence points to the fact that he tweeted a picture of his junk publicly by accident because he is not technically savvy.

That's a reasonable speculation, and increasingly supported by evidence. It would well explain most of the details. It could also be that he was trying to send it to the coed. Or more facts could present themselves.

Yep, he pulled a boner because he thought he needed to send a picture of his package to activate the Tweetdick app.

 

[Nova Land]

This seems to be evidence from a third party non-partisan site that the hockey tweet and the picture tweet were both posted from tweetdeck...

Yes. This is useful information, and from what appears to be a reliable source. Thank you for posting it!

...which seems to rule out the whole 'hack' theory.

By 'hack theory', are you referring to Cannon's theory that someone utilized the yFrog exploit to cause the tweet to be sent, or are you referring to a different theory?

My understanding is that technically using the yFrog exploit is not hacking. On the other hand hacking is a term which a lot of us who are not all that tech savvy (such as me) use carelessly as a sort of generic catch-all for anything of this sort.

If you are referring to Cannon's theory, could you explain to me how the tweet coming from someone using TweetDeck rules out the possibility that someone other than Weiner used TweetDeck when utilizing the exploit? I'm not aware of anyone stating the exploit wouldn't work for someone who had been using TweetDeck, so I don't see how this information affects Cannon's theory at all.

But I am not tech savvy. If there is a reason why this affects Cannon's theory, I'd like to understand it. The more things which can be ruled out, the sooner we are likely to get to the truth.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Yes. This is useful information, and from what appears to be a reliable source. Thank you for posting it!

By 'hack theory', are you referring to Cannon's theory that someone utilized the yFrog exploit to cause the tweet to be sent, or are you referring to a different theory?

Sorry for being unclear, the 'yfrog hack theory.'

My understanding is that technically using the yFrog exploit is not hacking. On the other hand hacking is a term which a lot of us who are not all that tech savvy (such as me) use carelessly as a sort of generic catch-all for anything of this sort.

If you are referring to Cannon's theory, could you explain to me how the tweet coming from someone using TweetDeck rules out the possibility that someone other than Weiner used TweetDeck when utilizing the exploit? I'm not aware of anyone stating the exploit wouldn't work for someone who had been using TweetDeck, so I don't see how this information affects Cannon's theory at all.

But I am not tech savvy. If there is a reason why this affects Cannon's theory, I'd like to understand it. The more things which can be ruled out, the sooner we are likely to get to the truth.

Well, I did leave open that it does not prima facie rule out that his twitter and FB accounts were hacked, as claimed.

The following things undermine (in my opinion) Cannon, while not necessarily conclusively proving the chain of events:

Cannon originally stated:
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2011/06/one-last-post-for-this-day-about.html
"From those words, Gooding thinks that he has proof that Weiner changed all of his usual Twitter habits and used an app called Tweetdeck. Unbelievable!"

Well, it does appear that the hockey tweet Weiner admitted to came from tweetdeck. So unbelievable ? I guess not.

Here cannon says:
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2011/06/mystery-attacker-exposed-meet-mighty.html

"When Weiner got started on Twitter, the only app for the Blackberry that sent pics is something called Twitterberry -- ye gods, what a puerile name! And that app appends the words "from Twitterberry" to the messages. We can't see those words anywhere in Weiner's twitterings."

Which is untrue. The twitter for blackberry app uses yfrog, and does not require a yfrog account to be created.

Cannon also claims:
"Well, that presupposition is wrong. Weiner had sent images via his Blackberry on previous occasions. He had to have established a Yfrog account at some point, because you can't use Tweetdeck on a Blackberry."

Well, guess what - Weiner has an ipad2. And you can use tweetdeck on it.

I guess the most damning thing in my mind against Weiners twitter account being hacked is the fact that he sent the picture 5 mintutes prior to the hockey tweet. Both using tweetdeck. It seems rather prescient of the wolfe et al to use tweetdeck to send the picture and then have Weiner use tweetdeck 5 minutes later to send the hockey tweet , when he had a history of using twitter.com and twitter for blackberry prior to this.

ETA: Sorry if I perhaps missed the main question - the 'hack' involves only yfrog - if the post was sent from tweetdeck (as I linked), the only way it would have been sent is with tweetdeck - that rules out the yfrog exploit, as the twitter api would not have sent the 'tweetdeck' information ... meaning it *had(* to be sent from tweetdeck.

Also, having Wolfe using tweetdeck requires that Wolfe has Weiners twitter password. If he has the twitter password, I would think he could do better than just the picture ... a nice tweet to go along with it would be more damaging. Again ... speculation on my part. Also it requires Wolfe to have the picture to send along. Since we can't verify whether it's Weiner - it's just more speculation based on Weiners non-denial. So both of these points aren't hard evidence of anything, but they do help understand the potential scenarios, I think.


How is the following for a simple and believable scenario that accounts for everything we know from Weiner so far:

How is this for a scenario:

1) Weiner installs tweetdeck on his new ipad 2.

2) He is sitting around in his underwear getting ready or actually watching his tivo'ed hockey game

3) He is playing with his ipad while watching the hockey game, and uses the rear camera ( which btw, tacks 800x600 resolution photos, same res as the photo in question) and aims it downstream and snaps the alleged pic

4) thinking he is tweeting a pic just to the girl, he sends it

5) he then tweets about the tivo eating his hockey game

6) he then looks at his twitter stream and realizes the pic went to his public twitter stream

7) he tweets that his twitter and FB are hacked, his toaster is still loyal - and deletes all his yfrog pictures.


OK - so this above SPECULATION. But it fits the evidence, and does not add all kinds of weird conspiracy nonsense.

As to wolfe et al - maybe there is something hinky going on there, It certainly seems that he was 'stalking' weiner, and had some interesting insights into what was going to happen.

As to Betty and Veronica ... I have to give more attention to reviewing their statements - but I was struck on my initial reading of the mothers statement that I hope she is an attorney, because it struck me as an overly detailed and well written missive to be coming from some random girls mother.

 

[leftysergeant]

That would make prosecutors and police perverts. Thanks for making that abundantly clear.

So? My critique was of his casting as "perverse" anyone that thinks someone is guilty--holding the world to the presumption of innocent standard that is applied to the court.

It is perverse to consider an honorable public official guilty on the word of a bunch of sexual deviants with a known history of lying and perjury.

It's an idiotic suggestion as there is no data and no way to analyze it. Both the left, right, and non-partisan security experts have criticized Weiner's handling of the event so it's inaccurate to keep repeating the claim that "he didn't do it the way I think it should have been done". I have not perpetuated the media interest in this. Weiner has no one to blame but himself.

This is not evidence of a crime or even anything of which to be ashamed. There are a lot of otherwise brilliant and honorable men who have no bleeding clue how to handle an attack by such vile critters as those who are after Weiner's hide.

 

[Nova Land]

Sorry for being unclear, the 'yfrog hack theory.'

Ah, so this is Cannon's theory you are talking about. Thank you for clearing that up.

I think it might be clearer and better to call it the yFrog exploit theory rather than the yFrog hack theory. A key point of Cannon's theory is that it was not necessary to hack Weiner's yFrog account and in fact it was not hacked. Rather, a vulnerability was exploited which allows someone other than the account holder to cause a tweet to be sent out from the account without the outsider ever being signed into the account. All that was needed was to know the address of the account -- not the password.

Someone more tech savvy please correct me if I'm misstating things. But my understanding is that this is not a hack -- so calling it a hack confuses matters considerably, not only as to which theory is being talked about but what the ramifications of the action are. For instance, the laws regarding hacks apparently are different from the laws regarding exploits.

The following things undermine (in my opinion) Cannon, while not necessarily conclusively proving the chain of events...

Again, thank you for a clear and helpful response.

These do indeed appear to be instances where Cannon was mistaken on some details of what happened. But none of these criticisms relates to Cannon's theory that an outsider could cause the tweet to happen by exploiting a vulnerability in yFrog.

That basic theory -- which tech savvy people tested out for Cannon, before yFrog disabled the feature to prevent anyone else from doing what likely was done to Weiner -- appears to be correct: it would have been possible for Wolfe or Stack to have caused the tweet to be sent, and if someone had done so using the vulnerability Cannon discovered the result would have looked exactly like the screenshots being circulated. Whether the tweet was sent using TweetDeck (as it turns out) or using Twitterberry (as Cannon at that time thought) is irrelevant to the main point, that such a spoofing of the account was possible.

The other points seem similarly irrelevant as far as disproving that the yFrog exploit which Cannon discovered exists and works as Cannon said. To use these tangential points as Gooding does, and claim they show the exploit didn't exist or couldn't have worked, is inaccurate and dishonest.

The examples you provide do show that Cannon can and does make mistakes. And Cannon has been one of the first to admit this. He has said repeatedly in his posts that he is not tech savvy and could easily be wrong about things he is saying -- and asks those who know more than he does to correct him when he misstates things.

The fact Cannon was right that it would have been possible for an outsider such as Wolfe or Stack to cause the tweet to be created does not mean that Cannon will be right on every other claim he makes in this matter. And from these examples, clearly he isn't. But on that particular claim, that a vulnerability existed in yFrog which could be used by an outsider to cause the tweets, the evidence so far is that Cannon was right.

That's the claim which was at issue, and that's the claim which Gooding was claiming to have disproven. And from the examples you've provided, that clearly is not the case. Intentionally or not, Gooding deceived people. I'd say that discredits Gooding more than it does Cannon. Thank you for explaining this in more detail and helping to clear things up.

 

[TheL8Elvis]

Ah, so this is Cannon's theory you are talking about. Thank you for clearing that up.

I think it might be clearer and better to call it the yFrog exploit theory rather than the yFrog hack theory. A key point of Cannon's theory is that it was not necessary to hack Weiner's yFrog account and in fact it was not hacked. Rather, a vulnerability was exploited which allows someone other than the account holder to cause a tweet to be sent out from the account without the outsider ever being signed into the account. All that was needed was to know the address of the account -- not the password.

Someone more tech savvy please correct me if I'm misstating things. But my understanding is that this is not a hack -- so calling it a hack confuses matters considerably, not only as to which theory is being talked about but what the ramifications of the action are. For instance, the laws regarding hacks apparently are different from the laws regarding exploits.

I have to apologize, because I think I misunderstood your understanding of the yfrog exploit.

(hack, exploit, unauthorized access ... call it what you will as long we as understand we mean the ability to post a picture to yfrog to a different users account as long as we know their secrret email address...)

The yfrog exploit requires the user to have created a yfrog account. This was demonstrated by cannon and here on JREF.

What I tried ( and I guess failed ) to explain was that many twitter clients use yfrog as an asset to upload pictures, but do not require the users to create an account. Twitter uses Oauth to post the picture to yfrog - this does not entail creating a yfrog account ... so there is no 'secret email address' that someone could use to post pictures to that account. This is why Cannon was very insistent that Weiner had created an account. The entire ability for someone to 'forge' a post from wiener relies on him having created a yfrog account, instead of utilizing a client like tweetdeck or twitter for blackberry to add pictures to his tweets.

BUT, that all became a moot point with the evidence that the tweet came from tweetdeck. You cannot use the yfrog exploit to make the tweet appear that it came from tweetdeck.

The only way it comes from tweetdeck is :
1) wiener sent it
2) wolfe has his twitter password, and posts from tweetdeck

I hope that clarifies my earlier posts.

 

[Nova Land]

I have to apologize, because I think I misunderstood your understanding of the yfrog exploit.

No apology necessary. I don't understand this stuff very well and am looking for clarification. Your posts have been very helpful. I appreciate that. Even if it takes a few posts to get past some misunderstandings, I'm beginning to understand better some of the things that are being said. So again thank you for helpful and informative posts.

The yfrog exploit requires the user to have created a yfrog account. This was demonstrated by cannon and here on JREF.

Yes, I think I follow that. (Cannon argues that Weiner had created a yFrog account, since he was able to immediately go to yFrog and delete the picture that had been posted in it. Is this in dispute?)

... Twitter uses Oauth to post the picture to yfrog - this does not entail creating a yfrog account ... so there is no 'secret email address' that someone could use to post pictures to that account. This is why Cannon was very insistent that Weiner had created an account. The entire ability for someone to 'forge' a post from wiener relies on him having created a yfrog account, instead of utilizing a client like tweetdeck or twitter for blackberry to add pictures to his tweets.

Prior to May 27th, all of the pictures Weiner had posted to his account were sent via Blackberry. (Or so I've seen posted; is that incorrect?) That's one reason Cannon mistakenly thought that would have been true on the 27th as well. If Weiner had previously been posting pictures via Blackberry rather than TweetDeck, wouldn't that have created the yFrog account already?

BUT, that all became a moot point with the evidence that the tweet came from tweetdeck. You cannot use the yfrog exploit to make the tweet appear that it came from tweetdeck.

Ah! That's something I did not know, and makes your previous post a lot clearer.

If that's true, then you are correct: the fact that the tweet came from TweetDeck would indeed mean Cannon's theory is much less likely (and could not be correct unless the person who sent it, if it were someone other than Weiner, had the password. That's not impossible; but as you said it's significantly more complicated than the theory Cannon was putting forward.

One more question: can you cite me a source (other than Gooding's blog post) which states that if you upload a picture to yFrog via TweetDeck it does not automatically generate a tweet the way it does if you do not use TweetDeck?

I understand Gooding seems to be claiming that -- but Gooding's writing on this is not clear. What Gooding appears to actually demonstrate is that he was able to upload a picture to yFrog with TweetDeck without generating such a tweet. That's not the same as establishing it's impossible to generate such a tweet when you use TweetDeck; what it establishes is that it's possible not to generate such a tweet when you use TweetDeck.

That Gooding was able to find a method to upload a picture via TweetDeck without generating a tweet certainly is relevant to the discussion. But I'd like to be clear that this means pictures uploaded by TweetDeck never generate this kind of tweet. Who says that, and how do they know?

Unfortunately it would seem impossible to test this now. Since yFrog has closed the loophole, I assume it would be impossible for an outsider to generate such a tweet by uploading a photo to the account regardless of whether they uploaded it via TweetDeck or via some other method. But if this is an established fact, then I'd like to see it stated clearly. So far I haven't seen this (which is one reason I was confused by your post).

Various sources have said that the vulnerability Cannon discovered was known to a number of people long before this incident occurred. If it's true that the vulnerability can't be exploited by someone using TweetDeck, perhaps one of them has stated this somewhere? If you can point me to someone who has clearly stated this, I'd appreciate it.

If this is true that TweetDeck doesn't generate such a tweet when a picture is uploaded through it to yFrog (and not simply true for the particular settings Gooding used) then you are right: that does significantly affect Cannon's theory and make it much less likely. Thank you for clarifying that for me. You have a good point and I'm glad I now understand it a bit better.


Edited to add: re-reading this post after posting it, I think I'm still grossly misunderstanding what it is that TweetDeck does differently and what the significance is. My apologies if the above post makes no sense to those of you who do understand these things -- and thank you for any further clarification you can provide to reduce my confusion.

 

[marplots]

Now I'd like to know how anyone could get an erection in anticipation of a hockey game. That would be enough to toss him out of office right there.

 

[Ziggurat]

If you prefer the term secret clique to conspiracy

I have no reason to think there was anything particularly secret about it, and neither do you. They weren't undercover, and the very fact that they were contacting strangers makes it hard to take the term "secret" seriously. I mean, really, did that thought not even cross your mind?

The reason almost nobody knew what they were doing is simply because they were nobodies.

Do you deny that this secret clique was contacting under-age girls, despite the evidence that they were?

Here's a clue: I presented evidence of such contact. See if you can figure out why.

 

[Brainster]

Interesting piece on Patterico this evening, pointing out that the story being told by the teenaged girls following Weiner doesn't quite add up.

Betty also says that Weiner unfollowed her as a favor due to Stack’s harassment:

I was so excited because we were learning about politics in school and he is a great hero of mine. This excitement turned to fear when a group of women and men started harassing me for following Rep Weiner and for being followed by him. They said the most terrible things about him.

He was forced to unfollow me so they would stop harassing me.

Here is the problem. That’s not what she said at the time.

On May 18, “Betty” said:

Well @RepWeiner unfollowed me. That was a short time. I defended him from people. Some thanks he gives to his loyal followers.

She sounds upset at Weiner. How is that consistent with Weiner doing her a favor?

Moreover, just a day earlier, on May 17, she had been bemoaning the fact that one of her “idols” had disappointed her:

It really sucks when one of your idols doesn’t live up to expectations.

There's quite a bit more and I'm not sure I follow all of it, but it closes with some interesting information:

I’m going to close with this: Andrew Breitbart has been on the radio today saying that he has new information that is going to change the dynamics of this story.

This is not over, folks. Not by a longshot.

UPDATE: Breitbart tweets:

Last chance to join the #FollowBreitbart juggernaut! (Well, not really.) #Weinergate taking new turn tomorrow in AM.

I know, "Lalalalala I can't hear you lalalala Breitbart lalalalal."

 

[leftysergeant]

There is no way that any rational person will ever take the sludge monster's word that he did not manufacture whatever he is selling now. I'll have to sort through a lot of threads to find the referrence, but we do know that the Chamber of Commerce has hired some high-powered computer wonks to sabotage Democrats.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that they would have something to gain by running their dreck through the sludge monster's hog wallow.

Credible deniability and all that.

All breitbarfs are to be sent directly to the circular file. Media people disemmenating them as legitimate news items should not be considered competent in their profession.