Dirty Tricks

A recording of a private staff meeting of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was stolen and leaked to the press by his Democratic challenger's campaign. The incident, which caused Schwarzenegger to have to issue an apology to a California politician for remarking that she had a "very hot" personality, has been under investigation by authorities.

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."

Hoch said she forwarded the Internet Protocol address used to download the file to the California Highway Patrol, which is investigating how the files became public.

Calfo said the Angelides campaign believes two of its staffers provided the audio clip to the Los Angeles Times, which made the governor's comments public last week.

"I'm looking into this I'm not happy," she said.

She said Angelides did not know about the file being provided to the newspaper.

Uh, sorry. Breaking into a password protected area without authorization is the definition of hacking. That was a really stupid political dirty trick that backfired rather badly.

UPDATE: Captain Ed is pretty harsh on this one, too.

Other Links to this Post

1. Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » Ethics — Thursday, 19 October , 2006 @ 8:28 pm