24 Comments

‘…what does this say about who runs this country, and about our supposed rule of law?…’

Do you need to ask?

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https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/02/22/catherine-herridge-posts-important-update-on-cbs-seizure-of-her-files-n2170482

Confirms what I was saying--they bagged her office. Hopefully she had sensitive stuff elsewhere. "Completely inappropriate" is pretty weak sauce.

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"One former CBS journalist said that many employees 'are confused why [Herridge] was laid off, as one of the correspondents who broke news regularly and did a lot of original reporting.' Really? Does self-delusion have any limits? Did they not get the memo? I feel for them.

I was always amazed that CBS hired her to begin with.... why?... when she was opposed to their corporate mission (covering the news with a pillow before it began to move)

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10052050-journalism-is-about-covering-important-stories-with-a-pillow-until?

They must have known she was a legitimate reporter willing to expose stuff even if it might argue against their preferred political candidates and positions. Maybe this person (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Zirinsky) had something to do with it? At any rate this person is long gone, and the DEI efforts apparently along with her. Maybe they will hire a Trans something in her place. Really, is there one person who takes CBS News seriously anymore? Prime target for the RNC if the RNC cared.

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This is intended as a "mole" hunt. Intelligence insiders giving information to the "wrong" press personnel. Sleuths are gonna have to stay close to whoever will be leaving the FBI in the next few months.

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Considering the stories she's worked on most recently, FBI might be a pretty good guess.

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More Banana Republic shite.

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Yep, all we’re missing is the fancy uniforms!

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I would have thought she would not put confidential (and/or damaging, risky) info on CBS' server. She could have been snooped on any day whether or not she was fired. Would CBS snoop on her? No way! Would the IC snoop on her? No way! /sarc. Would she know she could be snooped on? Of course.

At the time, I did wonder why she left Fox to go to CBS. My impression is that she was able to break a few stories at CBS which perhaps reached a wider audience than her stories at Fox. But I don't watch CBS so I really don't know. It must have been really tough to get some stories past her CBS editors...

And yes, maybe Tucker Carlson could probably use a good investigative reporter. Assuming she's not a plant (as has been suggested).

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She should have been on the phone with Tucker tonight.

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The fight is escalating and the people in control are getting more and more desperate so the moves can’t be hidden any more - it’s becoming an exercise of naked power. They are counting on the fear or apathy of people to get away with their treachery but the problem with that strategy is that if you ultimately take everything away from people they WILL fight because people who have nothing have nothing to lose.

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Mark, the DIGITAL Paradigm is complete surveillance, of everyone everywhere. “Modernity” created the idea of “privacy” - go to your room and read, go to your room and listen to the radio, go to your room and watch television. Privacy became a “con” in the TELEVISION paradigm: not allowed to have your own opinions. The internet going “public” in the early 90s was all about ramping up marketing, thus data, thus no privacy. The kind of privacy we have talked about in our lives is now dead.

Interesting comparison is DIGITAL and SCRIBAL (Medieval) regarding privacy, draw a line from Aristotle to Aquinas to the eve of the Printing Press…

DIGITAL is retrieving the Medieval sensibilities…so what will public and private look like say 30 years from now…the ground of that is already here.

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Did Herridge keep her files on CBS servers, how else would they have access? Wouldn’t a professional journalist keep it on a private database, especially informants’ details? Reporters have gone to jail to protect sources.

If she lands a cushy job it’ll be a tell she was in with the spooks.

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"Meanwhile, what does this say about who runs this country, and about our supposed rule of law?"

This moves says there is no more Law. USA is now an area of Robber Barons, where the powerful do as they please.

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I wonder if it is connected to the recent indictment by the DoJ of one of its paid informants.

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I read that Soros has been buying up radio stations, particularly Spanish speaking stations. In the report it was also reported that he allegedly bought CBS and all its substations. So firing Herridge would make sense if she had the goods on the Biden Administration and all their crimes.

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This regime is doing a lot to rehabilitate the historical record of those authoritarians of the 20th century and when you add their complicity to Israel's genocide is it fair to say Biden and his regime are 'literally' Hitler as the Nazification of the U.S. Government continues apace? Inquiring minds want to know.

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Feb 22
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I was surprised when she left Fox, too. I didn't believe she'd have the same freedom in her reporting, and Turley indicates that management at CBS did interfere with legit stories.

Where did you hear she kept source identities on the corp. network? I didn't read or write that. What I did read was that her "computers" and other records were seized by CBS. I assume that means they took over her office.

There was nothing to prevent her having her own computers with as much or as little security as she wanted. I assume she was pretty savvy. Secure connections--as far as that goes--and storage on removable drives kept in locked containers in a locked office. What CBS did was unprecedented. Since CBS appears to be claiming that everything in her office was their property one presumes that they will use professional forensic guys (CrowdStrike) to get past password protections. They will not have waited to have this litigated.

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Feb 23
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Any corporation/institution (universities are very up-to-speed on this) would have IT policies governing devices connected to their network. Including from off-site and not limited to computers, smartphones etc. Remote-wipe policies are common. A file copied from A to B will almost certainly pass through one or more intermediate points and might be retained. Feigning surprise at this is naive. As you say L Jones, a device that is never connected to a network, and ideally a removable storage medium, would be the bare essentials for keeping data private. Paper files even better, though not next to the Corvette....

None of the above excuses the sharp practice of CBS that is alleged, nor the entity pulling their strings.

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I don't think Herridge was naive. When I was still working for the government we were informed that we had no expectation of privacy. Not online, not on phones, and we only were allowed government devices--computers, phones, cars, you name it. Everything we did basically belonged to the government. It's different in the journalistic world. CBS is essentially claiming Herridge had no expectation of privacy, but the reaction from others in that world shows that she did have a reasonable expectation of privacy, as Turley maintains. He knows the legal issues there.

But she wasn't naive. They seized "computers" in the plural. That probably includes multiple laptops and multiple smartphones, most of which were not connected to the corporate network. That's why they bagged her offiice--to grab all her work, including work that wasn't connected to their network. I have wondered what use agreements journalists have with their employers, but from Turley's account--as a lawyer/journalist--CBS is swimming against the stream of common practice. I expect Herridge to win a lawsuit on this--CBS knows that, too. I also expect that her information, including confidential sources, has already been compromised for the benefit of persons outside of CBS.

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Strong likelihood too that snooping warez will be installed on any of her hardware (assuming it wasn't infected already).

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But that's precisely the stuff that neither she nor any other journalist would have expected from a corporate media outlet with a reputation to protect. That's why that part of the world is shocked by this.

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Feb 23
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I can imagine that she was careful, but not that she could be careful enough to defeat NSA encryption cracking.

Hopefully she was not just smart, but clever. Sources kept on a hand written notebook never off her person, and referred to in electronic media through clever codes, like:

Source A = Christopher Wray

Source B = Bill Barr

Any 🤡 will do.

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One would hope. But computers have had a negative effect on the idea of personal information security... encouraging us to believe they would provide it rather than negate it.

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LOL! And, yes, there's lots to be said for little black books.

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