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Wikipedia Crime Government Privacy The Internet United States

Former Senate Staffer Admits To Doxxing Five Senators On Wikipedia (theverge.com) 91

Posted by BeauHD from the dude-chill dept.
Jackson Cosko, a former employee of Senator Maggie Hassan, has "admitted to breaking into Hassan's office after being fired, stealing data that included personal contact information, then posting that information online during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing," reports The Verge. The report says Cosko added several senators' private phone numbers and addresses to Wikipedia. He has pleaded guilty to computer fraud, witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and making restricted personal information public. From the report: Cosko worked as a computer system administrator for Hassan, but he was fired in May of 2018. According to a plea agreement, he retaliated by using another employee's key to break into his old workplace at least four times, installing keyloggers on computers and using stolen login credentials to download gigabytes of data. While watching the Supreme Court confirmation hearing in September, Cosko "became angry" at Republican senators questioning Kavanaugh -- so he posted contact information for Senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch on Wikipedia. Cosko was interning for US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee at the time, and his changes were flagged by a bot that detects Wikipedia edits from congressional computers. The bot inadvertently helped spread the senators' information across Twitter, a process that prosecutors say Cosko aided by tweeting about his leaks.

Cosko struck again a few days later, posting information about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul -- who had called for an investigation -- on Wikipedia. He added comments calling himself a "golden god" who had a legal right to post the information, asking readers to "send us bitcoins." When a witness spotted him in Hassan's office the next day, Cosko responded with a threatening email titled "I own EVERYTHING." Cosko claimed he would release private emails, encrypted messages, and the health data and social security numbers for senators' children. "If you tell anyone I will leak it all," he wrote. Cosko was arrested soon after. Attorneys say Cosko could serve up to 57 months in prison, and he's required to give up all the equipment used in the crimes.
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Former Senate Staffer Admits To Doxxing Five Senators On Wikipedia More

Former Senate Staffer Admits To Doxxing Five Senators On Wikipedia

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  • Oof (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Yikes

  • Under lock and key (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I wonder how many others are ready to go rogue?

  • Slap on the wrist (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    He's part of the revolutionary socialist democrat movement. It will be reduced, and definitely pardoned by a Democrat POTUS to "send a message" that authoritarianism won't be stopped, and don't you forget it!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      That does seem likely. But the way things look right now, with a 57 month sentence, he'll have been about at 20 years before the Democrats regain the White House. Maybe 200 years.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by thrich81 ( 1357561 )

      History lessons for those not around to remember:
      After the mass pardons by G H Bush of all the Reagan Iran-Contra criminals in '92, Republicans have no grounds to criticize any pardons done by Democrats.
      And it was Republican Gerald Ford who pardoned his Republican predecessor in '74 even before charges were brought, "a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period f

      • Re: Stupid childish whataboutism faux logic (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05, 2019 @10:07PM (#58392978)

        By your standards, Reagan was shot by a Democrat so itâ(TM)s for Republicans to shoot Dem Presidents.

        You are an idiot.

        • Which elected Democrat official shot Reagan?!
        • This is just poor logic, no those are not the parent's standards. You are bad at following conversations. The AC at the top posted some anti-democratic nonsense, and the parent responded with some anti-republican stuff. The parent used the phrase "Republicans have no grounds to criticize any pardons done by Democrats" which is as close as it gets to what you're claiming, but this is a commonly used phrase when someone is trying to point out hypocrisy. It is not an excuse for Democrats to misbehave.

          Also,

      • History lessons for those not around to remember:
        After the mass pardons by G H Bush of all the Reagan Iran-Contra criminals in '92, Republicans have no grounds to criticize any pardons done by Democrats.
        And it was Republican Gerald Ford who pardoned his Republican predecessor in '74 even before charges were brought, "a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974."
        The Republicans have been far more shameless in using the pardon to clear their cronies of crimes committed while in actual government positions.
        By the way, the Attorney General at the time who advised Bush on the Iran-Contra pardons was our current AG, William Barr, handpicked by Trump to take over the Justice Department now...

        Okay then, let's play that game.

        Democrats have no grounds to complain when Republicans filibuster a supreme court pick in the final year of a Democrat president (Obama's nomination of Garland) because Democrats started that tradition.

        Democrats have no grounds to complain when Republicans refuse to impeach a sitting president, because during Obama's campaign he convinced his party not to impeach George Bush for cause - including "taking the country to war under false pretenses" and various war crimes - becau

        • Re:Let's play that game (Score:5, Informative)

          by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Saturday April 06, 2019 @12:12AM (#58393224)

          Democrats have no grounds to complain when Republicans filibuster a supreme court pick in the final year of a Democrat president (Obama's nomination of Garland) because Democrats started that tradition.

          Really? Which nominee did they filibuster for over a year? (If you want to save some time, they didn't.)

          Also, you're wrong about "filibustering" Garland. McConnell wouldn't even let there be a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, so there was no filibuster.

          Democrats have no grounds to complain when Republicans refuse to impeach a sitting president, because during Obama's campaign he convinced his party not to impeach George Bush for cause

          Wow do you not have a very good grasp of time.

          The person who blocked impeachment was Pelosi. Obama's campaign had not started yet in January 2007, when Pelosi declared "Impeachment is off the table". Also, Obama at that point had very little institutional power, since he'd only been a Senator for a short time by that point.

          (This despite Democrats holding firm majorities in both houses at the time.)

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
          Senate was 49+2 yielding a truly massive one seat majority.
          House was 233 to 202, yielding a 31 seat majority.

          For those who are not quite familiar with the Constitution, conviction in the Senate requires 67 votes.

          Which 16 Republicans do you think would actually place party over country and convict? Keep in mind that almost all of those Senators are still in the Senate, and exactly zero of them are willing to put country over party under the Trump administration.

        • I'll bookmark the parent comment as "destroyed by facts, don't trust in the future". Thanks, jeff474747.
      • This is pure whataboutism. It in no way addresses or refutes the topic. Try again.

        • I'll give you that one, actually both -- whataboutism and not really germane to the topic of the original submission. I shouldn't have let myself be set off by a stupid AC comment in the first place, which is down to -1 now, I see.

          • Re: Slap on the wrist (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Next time just lose the part about dem versus rep. Your original comment is very useful and brings to light something that others often don't remember. People throw around things like "Trump is a traitor" or "Obama is a traitor". What they seem to forget is that Reagan actually was a traitor by constitutional definition for aiding the enemy with Contra against Congress.

    • Re:Slap on the wrist (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 05, 2019 @10:17PM (#58393002)
      Its puzzling to me how far detached from reality some of the far right are. If you take a look at democratic pardons you'll notice they aren't of political cronies, on the other hand if we look at Donald Trump he's only been in power a couple years and he's already done a number of politically motivated pardons (Arpaio, Scooter Libby, D'Souza), heck if we look at the past the most egregious cronyism pardon was Ford pardoning Nixon.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by elrous0 ( 869638 )

        You're the one who's pretty "detached from reality" if you think there is any partisan divide between politicians being corrupt self-interested scumbags.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tomhath ( 637240 )

        If you take a look at democratic pardons you'll notice they aren't of political cronies

        Nonsense. Take a look at Clinton's Pardongate controversy.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • He is untethered, and his rage knows no bounds! [youtube.com]

  • The political sections of Wikipedia are already a joke, even compared to a few years ago. The current popular game is to fish Google for negative references or bylines to a (usually conservative) person or organization the editor doesn't like and then use it to frontload the beginning of their article with negative information. Then the change is etched in stone because it came from the 'reliable' NYT its automatically the consensus no matter how obscure or widespread it is.

  • No mention of party -- must be a Democrat then (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @09:37PM (#58392872)
    Hmm ... no mention of the political party he and his senator are members of. They must be democrats then. If they were Republicans the media and summaries would surely be pointing that out.

    • First, it's the Verge! Not your boogieman; "the media". Second, they are reporting on his plea which rightfully doesn't mention party affiliation, because this is beyond party lines...

      They actually don't mention any party affiliation for any members; except to point out that his specific targets listed in the plea were all Republicans (who were actually not following the party line at that moment). I guess they could have mentioned that he also committed crimes against a Democratic office? But why does t

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I blame Donald Trump for this.

    • Precisely.

      If "Cosko "became angry" at Republican senators questioning Kavanaugh -- so he posted contact information for Senators Lindsey Graham, Mike Lee, and Orrin Hatch " (all Republicans) didn't convince you, then a quick check of Wiki would confirm:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
      Maggie Hassan is a democrat.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I have never voted republiCON, but I despise false and unproven allegations! Three women accused that SCOTUS nominee (whom I did not want on the bench, BTW) and two were discredited, at least one of them facing criminal charges, last I heard on the other they were unsure to charge her.

      The PuppetMedia kept claiming that Christine Blasey Ford was a "credible witness" yet there were quite important variances in her testimony (what she claimed - - what her psychologist or psychotherapist said // her mention

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Why hasn't this Christine Blasey Ford been devoting her life to the pursuit of Kavanaugh if she is so credible????

        Because most people want to forget about traumatizing experiences, not dwell on them for 30 years. As it is she eventually had to get therapy for it, four years before Kavanaugh was nominated, which is pretty convincing evidence that it happened, it did hurt her, and she didn't invent it to derail a Trump nominee (how the fuck was she supposed to know that Trump would be elected in four year'

      • two were discredited, at least one of them facing criminal charges, last I heard on the other they were unsure to charge her.

        This surprised me so I went looking, as near as I can tell none of this is true. None of the three have been discredited, and none of the three have been charged with anything. One of the three was referred to the justice department for criminal investigation by a Republican senator. That's it.

        This comment: "Why hasn't this Christine Blasey Ford been devoting her life to the pursuit of Kavanaugh if she is so credible????" is absolutely insane.

  • Oh how I do love the smell of coerced false confession in the morning!

  • If a Republican aide had done this the work 'Republican' would be in every other sentence and it would also blame Trump.

    Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.
    - Jim Treacher

  • calling himself a "golden god"

    ROFL

    had a legal right to post the information

    send us bitcoins

    If it's his legal right, why do payments need to be paid in bitcoin?

    threatening email titled "I own EVERYTHING."

    would release private emails, encrypted messages, and the health data and social security numbers for senators' children. "If you tell anyone I will leak it all,"

    His legal right to sell children's social security numbers? This guy is pretty hilarious!

  • In Washington DC there happens to be all kinds of police. Probably more than any other place in the country. There's Metro PD (DC Police), FBI, Secret Service, Customs, Treasury, Federal Protection, Park Police, bla bla bla.. finally - Capital Police! So they just let people in and do whatever? Seems odd. Here's a fired guy, don't need to watch him? Usually when you're fired from some place, you're persona non grata.

    Maybe the Capital Police are only good enough for show?

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