ChrisSoghoian
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Facebook admits hiring PR firm to smear Google
It seems like the ongoing rivalry between Facebook and Google has taken a turn for the subversive. Last night, a spokesman for the social network confirmed to the Daily Beast that Facebook paid a top PR firm to spread anti-Google stories across the media and to encourage various outlets to examine allegations that the Mountain View company was violating user privacy. The PR firm, Burson-Marsteller, even offered to help blogger Chris Soghoian write a critical op-ed piece about Social Circle -- a service that allows Gmail users to access information on so-called "secondary connections," or friends of their friends. Social Circle, in fact, seems to have been at the epicenter of Facebook's smear campaign. In a pitch to journalists, Burson described the tool in borderline apocalyptic terms: "The American people must be made aware of the now immediate intrusions into their deeply personal lives Google is cataloging and broadcasting every minute of every day-without their permission." Soghoian thought that Burson's representatives were "making a mountain out of a molehill," so he decided to prod them about which company they might be working for. When Burson refused to spill the beans, Soghoian went public and published all of the e-mails sent between him and the firm. USA Today picked up on the story, before concluding that any claims of a smear campaign were unfounded. The Daily Beast's Dan Lyons, however, apparently forced Facebook's hand after confronting the company with "evidence" of its involvement. A Facebook spokesman said the social network hired Burson to do its Nixonian dirty work for two primary reasons: it genuinely believes that Google is violating consumer privacy and it also suspects that its rival "may be improperly using data they have scraped about Facebook users." In other words, their actions were motivated by both "altruistic" and self-serving agendas, though we'd be willing to bet that the latter slightly outweighed the former. Google, meanwhile, has yet to comment on the story, saying that it still needs more time to wrap its head around everything -- which might just be the most appropriate "no comment" we've ever heard.
The true story of a hacker's brief tenure as a fed at the FTC
The Federal Trade Commission managed to turn a few heads by hiring anti-DRM advocate Ed Felten as it's first Chief Technologist earlier this month, but it turns out the agency made an even more surprising hire last year -- one that didn't last very long. As Forbes reports, the FTC hired 29-year-old hacker Chris Soghoian in 2009, along with a handful of other technologists tasked with investigating corporations suspected of violating consumers' privacy. While that name might not ring a bell, Soghoian did gain some notoriety in 2006 by building a tool that was able to print out fake boarding passes for Northwest Airlines (in an effort to expose a security flaw), and he's since engaged in number of other activities that could either be considered hacks or pranks depending on your point of view. So how did his tenure at the FTC work out? Well, he nearly quit after being forced to submit to a fingerprint scan on his first day, and last December he sparked a controversy by posting audio he secretly recorded at an industry-only security conference on his personal blog -- although that did seemingly end up influencing a Justice Department report on phone record searches. Perhaps not surprisingly, that didn't exactly lead to a long career as a fed, and the FTC chose not to renew Soghoian's contract this year, stating only that he "provided valuable service to the agency."
