TapeGate
www.sactownmag.com

[1]

We don't know about you, but we think it's high time we had a little political scandal around here. Keeps things interesting. And now we have it, such as it is. For you non-HuffingtonPost-FlashReport types out there, the Republicans are positively apoplectic today about a March 3 audiotape that was leaked this week by some low-level political saboteurs in the Angelides camp. On said tape was our Governor casually speculating (in a response prompted by his chief of staff Susan Kennedy) on the ethnicity of Republican Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia. "She's either Puerto Rican, or the same thing as Cuban. I mean, they are all very hot. They have the - you know, part of the black blood in them, and part of the - the Latino blood in them, that together makes it." Okay, then. Of course, it was Kennedy who called Garcia "a ball-buster" - but in a good way. The LA Times currently has an audiotape of the conversation here, but the comments in question don't come along until the last minute or so of a rambling six-minute recording that only a political junkie could love.

Where's the outrage?
fetchingjen.blogspot.com

[2]

It looks as if the Angelides campaign hacked into and downloaded - and leaked to the media - a recording of a private meeting in which Governor Schwarzenegger described Hispanic legislator Bonnie Garcia as having a "very hot" (Latina) personality. ...

Treasurer Phil Angelides, said the governor "used language that is deeply offensive to all Californians." He also graciously reminded anyone listening that this was "a disturbing pattern of behavior" we have come to expect of Schwarzenegger.

These comments from the guy responsible for hacking into the Governor's private computer server? Phil Angelides should have taken the high road on this one and kept his mouth shut. He came out looking like a dirty politician. "No comment" should have been his comment. ... The Angelides campaign people can deny hacking all day long, but the public doesn't buy it.

Hot blooded, can't you see?
www.calitics.com

[3]

Folks, folks, let's get back to the subject at hand here. ... There are the same apologists that always say "What's the big deal?" everytime somebody makes a racist and stereotyping remark. Everybody is just being "too pc" and should lighten up.

Here's why the "hot blooded" thing makes a difference. "All jews are cheap." "All blacks are dumb." "All Muslims are terrorists." ... [I]f somebody said them, they would be rightfully harrangued as a racist and a fool, perhaps a dangerous one. ... Everybody seems, for some reason, to be buying the acting job that Arnold is a moderate now. ... The guy is sleazy, plain and simple ...

Wrecks, lies & audiotape
www.flashreport.org

[4]

The latest shockwave (?) in the campaign for Governor, the release of a four minute audiotape of Schwarzenegger making immature ethnological analyses and derogatory statements about legislators of his own party, is being looked upon by some pundits as the death rattle of the Angelides campaign. Its being talked of as the moment when Angelides staffers and supporters stop putting extra time into the campaign, when they lose hope and look elsewhere, when donors and others really stop taking the campaign seriously. ...

The Angelides campaign, from what we've read so far, are guilty of little more than cunning and hard work and they still lost the public debate. ... When they could have been on the high road, righteously going on offense, citing audio recordings stored on government computers as public documents ... [T]hey tried to spin the contents of the recording, when the contents were capable of spinning themselves. ... And the biggest blunder: they forwarded the audiotape itself instead of a link to the location of the audiotape, so the source was the Angelides campaign, not the Governor's office.

They made error after error after error. ... If we were on the Angelides campaign, we would be demoralized. The campaign gained access to highly exploitable (in terms of news coverage for further campaign hits) information. The campaign had access to the high road. This was a first for them, after bumbling the Jessica's Law support, repeated tax hike promises and misguided Arnold/Bush attack ads. The campaign blew it, again.

Political hacks and hacking
www.betterca.com

[5]

This is reaching the absurd. Political hacks and reporters just don't know enough about computer security to write about it. The question, no matter how they found the link, is did the file have a password on it? The answer is no.

Angelides' staff did nothing wrong by accessing a publicly available file. It was public because anyone could find it without resorting to black hat hacking. They did not break any sort of security mechanisms, because there were none. It does not matter if the average computer user could find it or not. The file was on a public server and was not behind a security wall. When in doubt, get a real expert to talk about it: "The test of illegality is exceeding authorization, and when you're open to the public, how can you possibly and credibly claim that you were restricting access?" said Lee Tien, an attorney and expert on Internet security with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco." ...

Know a good regional blog we should be watching? Contact John Hughes [5]