AP: Rival Admits Leaking Schwarzenegger Tape (CA-GOV)

[MallRat]

RIVAL ADMITS LEAKING SCHWARZENEGGER TAPE
By LAURA KURTZMAN, Associated Press Writer
34 minutes ago

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The campaign of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Democratic rival acknowledged Tuesday that it downloaded — and leaked to the media — a recording of a private meeting in which the governor described a Hispanic legislator as having a "very hot" personality.

But Cathy Calfo, campaign manager for Democrat Phil Angelides, said the campaign had done nothing wrong because the file was available publicly on the governor's Web site.

"No one hacked," Calfo said at a news conference to address the role played by the Angelides campaign, first reported by The Sacramento Bee. "They accessed information that was available to the public."

However, Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said Monday that the sound files were stored "in a password-protected area of the governor's office network computer system."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060912/ap_on_el_gu/schwarzenegger_tape_5

edit: link added

[davidinalameda]

1. what's that I hear

the sound of Angelides' campaign dying?

thanks Phil-now we're going to have Ahnuld for another four years

:puke:

[Boo Boo]

15. You were already going to have Ahnuld for another four years

Angelides wouldn't have pulled this stunt if he was winning.

[rocktivity]

27. Either Arnie's camp is lying or Angelides' camp was set up

Why would he do such a thing so close to the election?

:headbang:
rocknation

[davidinalameda]

45. because he's running a horrible campaign

and doesn't know better

if he clears 40% in the general, I'll be amazed

[stepnw1f]

2. So... Mr. Schwarzenegger is a Womenizing Bigot

Keep it in the news.

[seriousstan]

12. It might be an issue if Garcia hadn't stood beside him in support on this

"I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot," the governor says on the recording. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

The pair spoke affectionately about Garcia in the context of their attempts to induce recalcitrant Republican lawmakers to go along with a series of massive bond proposals to rebuild California's crumbling infrastructure that Schwarzenegger was attempting to hash out with the legislature. Californians will vote on the package, the biggest in the state's history, in November; Schwarzenegger is also running for reelection.

Garcia, who is Puerto Rican and the only Latina Republican in the assembly, appeared with Schwarzenegger yesterday and said she was not offended by the governor's comments. Garcia earlier told the Times that she refers to herself a "hot-blooded Latina."

"I love the governor because he is a straight talker just like I am," she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/08/AR2006090800599.html

[stepnw1f]

28. keep it in the news

let the people decide

[zonkers]

29. Talk about womanizing, this ARNOLD IN RIO video is primo...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_IzL4fyCVM

Most have seen it but I post anyway.

[slackmaster]

32. Everybody in California already knows that

The amazing thing is that it does not now nor has it ever prevented people from voting for anyone.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. What idiots.

Is someone paying Angelides to lose?

[zonkers]

7. There was no reason to admit this. Angelides does want to lose.

An anonymous letter to authorities indicating the sound byte was available to anyone online would have been enough. It is good that this thing stays in the news cycle though.

[rrasile]

4. Schwarzenamer

I saw the girl, yes he has taste for shit. The RIO chicks opened my eyes but he was young and on pills back then so even then all he could do was look.

[MallRat]

5. California DUers: Why are recent Dem gubernatorial candidates so... ugh?

Angelides and Westly didn't have the common sense to stay above mortally wounding each other in the primary. Now this.

Thinking back, there's Bustamante... and Gray Davis allowed himself to be abused and trashed by the GOP to the point of being recalled.

WTF, California? You have plenty of Democrats out there... where are the rising stars?

[bluestateguy]

9. I still remember nincompoop Kathleen Brown in 1994

That lady couldn't keep inside the lines of a coloring book.

[Jim Stark]

11. no shit

I can't believe this!

[Sam Odom]

17. Add Francine Busby

Terrible candidate

[bluestateguy]

6. I like this:

The governor makes bigoted remarks, and the focus of investigation then turns to the people who discovered the information.

Reminds me a lot of the Bush drunken driving discovery in 2000.

[Jim Stark]

10. I hardly call it bigoted

and Susan Kennedy AGREED with him.
nor was Garcia or McCarthy offended which is why Angelides is going to go down in flames. :mad:
this smacks of Watergate and looks plenty bad.

[rodeodance]

8. not good.

[zara]

13. Unclear why you think this will hurt Angelides at all. Arnold said it.

[Jim Stark]

14. are you kidding me?

can you say un-ethical? can you say WATERGATE??

[hughee99]

19. It actually reminds me of that repuke staffer

(I think it was one of Frist's guys) who leaked the memo(s) (I don't recall if it was more than one) being sent to Democrats on Judicial nominees. IIRC, the staffer claimed that since the memo(s) were unprotected on a government server, he did nothing wrong.

[UpInArms]

22. Hatch suspends GOP aide

Source of leaks from Judiciary Committee found

november 26, 2003

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) announced last night that a committee aide has been suspended after an internal investigation determined that the aide had accessed sensitive Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.

Appearing at a hastily called press conference in the Senate Radio-TV Gallery, Hatch said the staffer, whom he did not identify, was placed on administrative leave with pay. He said a former committee majority aide also had knowledge of the security breach, but was not disciplined.

“It is with deep regret that I must report today that the interviews conducted to date have revealed at least one current member of Judiciary Committee majority staff had improperly accessed some of the documents,” Hatch said.

Hatch said he was “mortified” at the results of the investigation, which he ordered.
“There’s no excuse that can justify these actions,” he added.

Hatch said the internal investigation was carried out by “two experienced special prosecuters assigned to the Committee.” They interviewed some 50 current and former staff members.

...more...

[hughee99]

25. Here's what reminded me of it...

http://www.thehill.com/news/031104/miranda.aspx

"While the report concluded that Miranda had read many of the internal Democratic documents, it failed to find evidence that GOP staffers had hacked into or improperly accessed files. Instead, the report indicated the files were likely accessed because an inexperienced Democratic systems administrator failed to set proper restrictions for accessing the compromised files."

[MallRat]

21. And the content of Dubya's TANG files was correct, too.

And yet, the debate over the authenticity of a single document completely obliterated any debate over his National Guard record, and took out a distinguished journalist (Rather) for good measure.

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

-MR

[patricia92243]

16. Did the other members of this committee realize they were being recorded?

THIS is the important thing of this whole business. Arnold saying it was recorded so his speach writters could be sure it sounded like him is too silly for words.

Recording people without them knowing it is one of the things that helped put Mr. Nixon out the door.

Anybody know if the others knew they were being recorded now - or at any other time???

[Jim Stark]

18. yes,

they do know, it's automatically recorded to his computer. Nixon knew it too.

[daleo]

20. The truth of this is still not obvious

One says password protected site, the other says publicly available. I see no evidence in the article either way.

[calimary]

23. Indeed, but still, my gut tells me we're screwed. The PERCEPTION

will be that the Angelides camp did a mean, not-nice thing, and the Schwarzengroper contingent (maybe not he himself, but the hatchet-jobbers around him who play bad gop to his good cop) will play this for all it's worth. "POOR Ahnold. A victim of those nasty, dirty-dealing Dems. Ick-ick-ick. I'll show 'em. I'll terminate 'em - hee hee hee, aren't I funny?" I myself will not react anywhere near like this, and you wouldn't take this at face-value, either, but unfortunately, a lot of other Californians will. They have neither the time nor the interest that'd be needed to read through this and dig out the pearls of truth. All they're gonna know is their emotional reaction. Shit. We've lost this one, I'm afraid. I hope I'm wrong, but I've learned never to overestimate the electorate. If there's an opportunity to do something stupid, they'll often take it.

[PeaceProgProsp]

30. Oh, please. My instinct is that this was on a public site

and, to distract people from the content of the comment, they're going to pretend that it was covertly acquired.

Remember Bush's Air National Guard record. Everyone knows the content was true, but Bush distracted people with the possiblity that the document was fake.

[daleo]

34. There could be "lying with the truth" here

The Republican says the "files were stored on a password protected site".
The Democrat says they "accessed information that was available to the public".

It could be that the data was on a password protected hard-drive that had been (perhaps inadvertently, perhaps on purpose as a Rovian-type trick) linked to the public website. So, they could both be telling the truth, and this could be a bit of distraction from the real issue, which is A.S.'s stereotyping of African-Americans and Latinos.

[slackmaster]

42. Yes, it is a distraction from real issues

I wouldn't go so far as to suggest Rovian trickery, but the spin and hype greatly outweigh the gravity of the situation. It's not like someone got hold of personal financial information or secret campaign plans. Arnold can't deny saying what he said.

[rocktivity]

46. You're forgetting that Arnie isn't exactly the king of credibility

Just as Karl Rove bugged his own office and blamed his opponents, why couldn't someone in Arnie's camp have "leaked" the existence of the audio to the Angelides camp? And about this so-called password-protected server--unless it was online, maybe it didn't need to be hacked--the password could just have easily have been provided.

:headbang:
rocknation

[Kagemusha]

26. That's because journalists report what people say, not the 'truth'

Just the truthiness.

[slackmaster]

31. "Publicly available" is actually an ambiguous term

Just because someone CAN download a file does not necessarily mean the download is authorized. Let me give you an example:

Before a major upgrade of DU in July 2003, the Web server allowed anonymous users, using pretty straightforward manipulation of URL strings, to browse the Web site's directories and download human-readable data files directly. It was POSSIBLE to access files that contained restricted information like the entire contents of the Moderators-only forum, and archives that were supposed to be accessible only to registered users.

One could argue that the files were "publicly available" because they were not very well secured (and they would be correct in a sense), but the terms of use on the site were very clear about what constituted authorized use. Downloading them was not an authorized use of the site.

I don't know the specifics of the Schwarzenegger site files, but FWIW here is his spin on the incident:

http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/press-release/3851/

As a long-time professional systems administrator, I cannot tell from the available information whether or not the download and/or disclosure of the information was proper. I'd like to be able to take everyone at their word, but in this case it's not possible that both sides are being completely honest.

If I had to deal with two members of my user community in a situation like this, I'd gently reprimand them both and tell them to act like adults in the future and not to let it happen again.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

24. Always keep your login credentials safe, kids!

And for God's sake, don't do something like this:

username: aschwarzenegger
password: illbeback

[Name removed]

33. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DeepModem Mom]

35. Angelides Camp Denies Hacking; Arnold aide: audio access "unauthorized"

Sacramento Bee: Angelides camp denies hacking
Governor's aide calls access to controversial audio 'unauthorized'
By Kevin Yamamura - Bee Capitol Bureau
Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Democrat Phil Angelides' gubernatorial campaign acknowledged Monday that it downloaded the digital audio file containing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's controversial private remarks on ethnicity, but said it did nothing inappropriate and accessed the recording through the governor's "publicly available" Web site.

But Schwarzenegger's legal affairs secretary, Andrea Lynn Hoch, said earlier that the access was "unauthorized" and that an internal audit discovered the six-minute audio file was hacked from the private computer system of the Governor's Office on Aug. 29 and 30.

Angelides campaign manager Cathy Calfo confirmed that her staff used one computer to access the audio clip on those days. But she said her staff did not hack into the Governor's Office server and that the file was widely available on Schwarzenegger's Web site.

"This is outrageous," Calfo said. "These are politically motivated charges, and they are completely false. What I have been told is, there was information accessed by one of our computers off of a taxpayer-funded, publicly available Web site that any member of the public would have access to."...

***

But Hoch earlier said the file in question -- in which Schwarzenegger mused that Cuban and Puerto Rican women have a "hot" temperament because of a supposed mix of "black blood" and "Latino blood" -- was located in a secure area of the Governor's Office server....

http://www.sacbee.com/111/story/21797.html

[yurbud]

36. why would they have to "hack" it when it was publicly available?

With accusations like this, it sounds like Arnold is getting some help from Karl Rove again.

[Sequoia]

37. He's running scared.

Didn't Arnie and them say they knew they were being recorded? Please, good people of California VOTE ARNIE OUT OF SACRAMENTO!

[goclark]

38. We are working day and night to make that happen!

[PeaceProgProsp]

39. Reminds me of the Karl Rove campaign when they planted

a fake bug in their candidate's office and then pretended the opponent planted it (allegedly).

[yurbud]

41. it was in Bush's Brain, and I think it got into the papers at the time

The kind of bug it was required changing the batteries every couple of hours, so it wouldn't be very useful except to someone who had nearly continuous access to his office.

It's in the Wiki article on him. Just search for "bug"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove#_note-12

[xxqqqzme]

40. this IS the updated saurovian planted microphone

or the rock through the campaign headquarter's window.

Something to complain about but no one can prove.

suspision & fear are saurove's fingerprints.

What a monumentally f*cked up childhood he must have had. His picture apprears under dysfunctional.

[no more years]

43. Im worried Arnold will win again

he will use any cheap trick to win again next month.

[Mz Pip]

44. Dumb move

really really dumb.
Thanks a lot.

You've just help re-elect Ah-nold.

If that's the best Angelides can do, he deserves to lose. Damn it.

How about trying to run against Ah-nold's record you dumbshit?

Mz Pip
:dem: