Huh -- it certainly appears that the FBI had some advanced notice of the Stratfor hack.
I'd be a little irritated if my credit card number was released while the FBI sat back and watched it happen. I'd be a lot more than irritated if I owned Stratfor, and the FBI sat back and watched some people hack my business. (Yes, Stratfor's security was awful. But it's still a crime.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm curious -- why isn't the FBI liable for this sort of thing? Surely there has to be some precedent here one way or the other.
Remember this is all situational. I imagine the FBI gets hundreds of tips daily but can't act on all of them without enough mounted evidence to take it seriously. They may have had tips earlier of the attack but they couldn't verify in time.
It always looks worse when you view it in hindsight. If the FBI had enough evidence to work with then they would have done something. Acting early without the evidence they need would have done more damage and not necessarily stopped anything from happening.
"why isn't the FBI liable for this sort of thing? Surely there has to be some precedent here one way or the other."
They have no legally enforceable duty to protect...
". a government and its agents are under no general duty to
provide public services, such as police protection, to any
particular individual citizen...
-- Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. App.181)"
The parties who have something to lose are credit card processors and merchants who could have payments refuted. I'm going to guess processors are pretty happy that its the federal budget paying their security bills and not them.
Given that Sabu is widely regarded as the de facto leader of lulzsec I'm very curious about how the Stratfor attack was planned and undertaken. If, as seems likely, the FBI knew about it before it happened that seems pretty serious. More so, if Sabu originated the idea for the attack and evangelized it to the group that raises the issue of entrapment.
I don't know much about the attack, but the data seem to be 100% legit and really hacked from the Stratfor database.
My wild guess is that Sabu was not responsible for the idea, but was instructed by his FBI supervisors to just play along and help people with the attack to build up credibility. Meaning - the feds didn't modify the data at all, they probably just used the server to track down the IPs.
Anyway, the fact that Sabu was an informer is surprising to me, a lot. Especially when he was still posting tweets, accusing OTHERS of being informers.
I'd be a little irritated if my credit card number was released while the FBI sat back and watched it happen. I'd be a lot more than irritated if I owned Stratfor, and the FBI sat back and watched some people hack my business. (Yes, Stratfor's security was awful. But it's still a crime.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I'm curious -- why isn't the FBI liable for this sort of thing? Surely there has to be some precedent here one way or the other.