Not quite the Watergate breakin...but obstruction of justice and it certainly raises the specter of shady deals.
quote:The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.
The complaint, filed by the FBI, alleges that David H. Safavian, 38, a White House procurement official involved until last week in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002.
quote:At the time of the golf trip, Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration, where ethics rules flatly prohibited the receipt of a gift from any person seeking an official action by the agency. When Safavian asked GSA ethics officers for permission to go on the trip, he assured them in writing that Abramoff "has no business before GSA," according to the affidavit signed by FBI special agent Jeffrey A. Reising ... On the same day Safavian discussed the golf trip with the ethics office, he sent an e-mail to Abramoff from his home computer, advising him how to "lay out a case for this lease."
What a brazen liar! I hope they throw the book at him.
It amazes me that people still don't encrypt emails when involved in criminal conspiracies worth millions of dollars, as Abramoff and his buddies were. It's like they assume they'll never be unearthed.
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Morbo: the unearthing is often done on one of the ends, where any encryption is automatically deciphered (assuming its cooperatively set up as necessary for the conversation to actually take place).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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What amazes me is that they put anything remotely incriminating in emails and in any writing whatsoever.
If I were an elephant in a refrigerator, as the old saying goes, I’d be careful not to leave footprints in the peanut butter.
Posts: 5957 | Registered: Oct 2001
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Morbo: the unearthing is often done on one of the ends, where any encryption is automatically deciphered (assuming its cooperatively set up as necessary for the conversation to actually take place).
This is probably true. But my further point would be why bother encrypting if you're so lazy you have automatic decryption, with the key already on the hardrive? The encryption key should of course be off the hard drive. The key could still possibly be determined, through various methods like keystroke logs and buffers where it could be kept inadvertatly, but why make the prosecutors' job easy?
AFR is right, the safest thing to do is not to have any incriminating evidence in writing at all. But this can be impracticable for complicated and ongoing criminal conspiracies, which is why the US and other governments want backdoors for all modern encryption programs.
I should have been born Italian, then I could have been a consigliere.
Too bad I believe in laws and morals and junk. *kicks can dispiritedly*
Posts: 6316 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Why do people cheat and steal? Because its easier than real work.
In other words, they are lazy.
Hence, they do not want to go to the extra effort to do the safe stuff like encryption, but want the easy and quick solution that appear to work, until they get caught.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Another interesting aspect is that a DeputyUSAttorney was pulled off from investigating Abramoff and demoted when he notified his superiors with what should have been a routine request for authorization. So there is (or possibly, was: eg former AttorneyGeneral JohnAshcroft) something rotten in the JusticeDepartment that still needs cleaning up.
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: Lets review:
Why do people cheat and steal? Because its easier than real work.
In other words, they are lazy.
Hence, they do not want to go to the extra effort to do the safe stuff like encryption, but want the easy and quick solution that appear to work, until they get caught.
I disagree, Dan, and think that that is a gross oversimplification.
Sometimes subverting the system to serve your own ends is the only way to get something done. That goes for the workplace, or the military...or criminal activities.
Some people are lazy, and so turn to crime, but there are a lot of very smart people who have worked very hard to make their money..adn not all of it has been legal. Most of them ahve been caught not because they were dumb, ort eh police were smarter than they wer, but because of poor luck.
There is a reason why the estimates of white collar crime say that only about 20% of it is reported at all.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Isn't he the guy who lost to the dead guy in the race for governor?
I hate to spoil an opportunity for a cheap shot on Ashcroft, but saying he "lost to a dead guy," while technically true, isn't exactly presenting the facts as they were. First off, it was a Senate race. In this case, the "dead guy" was Mel Carnahan, who was the sitting governor. He died in a plane crash just weeks before the election. Since it was too late to get any other names on the ballot, his party continued campaigning vigorously for people to vote for him, with the Lieutenant Governor vowing to appoint his widow Jean to take his place if he was "elected." According to CNN, Jean Carnahan
quote: used ads to make emotional appeals for "the values and beliefs that Mel Carnahan wanted to take to the United States Senate."
I would challenge any politician to try and top that.
Posts: 786 | Registered: Jun 2003
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