Conservative leading Sotomayor opposition fight stole 4,760 pages of Democrats' files

[meegbear]

Greg Sargent, over at The Plum Line -- has a "plum" of a find: a key figure opposing Obama Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor is the same guy who stole 4,760 pages of files from Democrats' computers in 2004.

The New York Times reports that a coalition of heavyweight conservative groups has signed a letter pressuring Senate Republicans to filibuster Sonia Sotomayor. The organizer of the pressure campaign — which has angered Senate GOP leaders — is identified as one Manuel Miranda, whom the paper only describes as a "former adviser on judicial issues to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist."

There’s a bit more to Manuel Miranda than that, however. Miranda, as longtime Congressional insiders will recall, was the GOP Senate staffer who was nailed in 2004 for hacking into the computers of Senate Dems and downloading thousands of documents relating to the strategies of Dem Senators on judicial nominations.

Miranda’s scheme — widely referred to as "Memogate" — was a big deal. A Senate probe found that many of the swiped files had been systematically downloaded "from folders belonging to Democratic staff," with some leaked to friendly reporters. Miranda resigned, and a Washington Post editorial denounced his "political spying operation” that indicated “how low the nominations process has sunk."

Read more about Miranda here. He's recently gone to Iraq.

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/06/sotomayor-miranda-stole-files/

[drm604]

1. I have to wonder why no charges were brought against this guy. n/t

[hughee99]

3. If I recall correctly, it was because it wasn't really "hacked" as such

I think the congresspeople had all their stuff on the same network and there was no security protections once you got in, so anyone with access to anything basically had access to everything. The security was the "honor system". I suspect that this system wasn't honored very well though and that enough people in congress were guilty of peeking where they shouldn't. They didn't want to push the issue once the guy quit.

[msongs]

2. wait, we must be bipartisan with these people. kiss up, cater, all the usual stuff nt