Comments on Foskettgate: Day 2

This scandal is bigger then you think. Look at the dismembered leg under the arm of the boy on the left. I think there taking the amputee fetish a bit to far.

I'm pretty sure family values doesn't include playing with body parts, much less getting them in the first place.

Apostrophe goes after the second "S" in Sanders to make it possessive, Dan.

Change made, Kelsey. Thanks.

Maybe they're trying to paint this as a Fortuny-like stunt by Eli... which isn't quite right given Eli drew from information (semi-)publically posted, rather than coercing Foskett to e-mail him personal info.

He's obviously not serious about running, so I don't see why people are trying to turn this into a big deal.

For laughs?

You know, Dan, this whole thing would be a good story, if you'd lay of the infantile, "Oh, and he's acting so Gay!" line. Clearly, the photos show him being a young, alcohol-bingeing, sophmoric prick. But any inference that he's suddenly a closet case are so tenuous as to be ridiculous.

Drop the gay-bashing, Dan, and focus on the stupid kid angle, which is at least plausible.

Well, Hugh is kind of young (age 20)and chances were his mommy and daddy didn't allow the trash which is The Stranger in their home and around an (obviously) impressionable teenage son... so Hugh most likely thinks you all are just a bunch of creeps asking him to get naked and all.

Maybe you should let him know The Stranger has a history of presenting candidates stripped down to buff... not creepy at all, just going for a candidate with "the goods". Just politick in the name of fun.

And you all are being nice, just asking for a BA angle and not a full frontal like you got from Nickels...

But Nickels is a democrat and that party can kick back in the name of fun, nothing like those no fun repubs...

Hugh... this is what mommy and daddy wouldn't let you see...
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=8651

You're right, Facebook profiles are not hard to find, but they do require a membership if you want to view them. Often they are only viewable to n-degree friends or members of a shared network (e.g., washington.edu, city of seattle). Eli claimed not to be a member of the site; so I'm guessing that a member of the site sent him the photos without permission. Maybe it wasn't a violation of the TOS (if they were sent by Foskett or the original photographers).

Posting semi-private photos just seems like a really weird way of demonstrating your belief that the private, consensual conduct of adult Americans everywhere should not be politicized.

Semi-Private? On the web? You've got to be kidding me. nothing on the web is private, not even semi-private.

Bush is the most pro-facebook president we have ever had. America needs to stand strong with facebook now. The Stranger has gone against conventional Seattle wisdom and been pro-facebok. Bush is the best American president facebook has ever known, and many in the Seattle Jewish community appreciate what Bush has done for facebook.

Annoyed:
No, not everything on the web is public. You can download your bank statement and credit card bill off the web. Is it OK if someone posts it on the slog?

What's the difference between that and this, other than facebook allowing a circle of 'friends' to see semi-private data vs. presumably just you and everyone who works at the bank to see your banking info?

Josh @ 9, The Stranger isn't picking random youths off Facebook and exposing their privacy (such as it is). Foskett is running for public office, running to be a State Representative. As such, he is totally fair game for any publicity, good or bad, that any news organization digs up. If he didn't want his Facebook photos made public, perhaps he should have either (a) not run for public office, or (b) taken the silly photos down before he filed as a candidate. I have no sympathy for Foskett whatsoever in this regard.

So you believe when it says you're viewing a "secure page"? whatever. i don't think anything i do, buy, see or search for online is private, not even when the dialogue box tells me it's secure. It's not secure, it's not private, despite what the helpful little box says.

Hugh Foskett has done the young people of this country a huge favor. They will laugh hysterically at his stupid drunky stoney pukey Facebook pics and then will go to their own web pages and do some serious deleting. This will enable them to get good jobs after college and maybe even run for public office someday. Thank you, Hugh Foskett.

I agree with metroblogging. It's dirty journalism, and not far removed from "the craigslist experiment" which was so condemned by The Stranger. You should respect the privacy of kinky sex fiends, but not young republicans? Why is that?

um, idiots, this is a public profile available to anyone that goes to the same school as him AND any alumni AND any of his coworkers AND if he belongs to general seattle well anyone currently residing in seattle who has a college education, that's like, what over a million people? and your trying to claim it's a private profile? private to whom? educated seattlites?

Yes, because those kinky sex fiends weren't trying to hurt anyone that didn't want to be hurt. Unlike the Republicans Foskett represents, who delight in hurting people, period.

Sorry, run for public office, even as a joke, and you invite public scrutiny. And if your private conduct that you elected to make public is in stark contrast to the stated goals of the political party and movement you claim to be a part of, you deserve to be roasted for it.

I believe that Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems correctly stated that sending information online is like passing an open note through the hands thirty people. So don't post anything you wouldn't want to share with a gazillion people. That's just common sense.

Besides, we'd better be nice to Hugh. These pictures prove that in 25 years, he will be the Decider -if there's any country left!

I really don't understand why everyone is getting so worked up about this.... I'm just taking a wild guess here, but I'm sure the 20 year-old who decided to run for public office in his free time (clearly as a joke) is thoroughly enjoying all the attention you people are paying to this. He's probably rolling on the floor of his frat laughing with his friends as each new post comes. It appears the mathematics major with an emphasis in teaching isn't headed for a future in politics.... Maybe our kids will wind up in his classroom and be glad to have a math teacher with a sense of humor.

first he'll need to get hired. when he applies for that job as a maths teacher, these posts will be a the top of his potential employer's google searches. his facebook profile, on the other hand, will remain invisible to search engines.

#16 is funny given I rebuked that faulty line of reasoning way back in comment #4.

#22 is funny given that #16 said "...not far removed from..." and didn't say "...identical to..." Things can be related enough to give off the stench of hypocrisy without being exactly the same.

#23 is funny given s/he tried to say #4 is irrelevant because #16 alluded to a point rebuked in #4 rather than stating they were identical circumstances, missing the point completely.

Again, the outrage of the Fortuny incident was from requesting information with complicit assurances of privacy when none existed. Foskett posted some incriminating images on a semi-public page, thinking no one would find and post them elsewhere. Not the same thing. Irrelevant.

If I post a picture of me, say, sticking my cock through a grapefruit, on MySpace, I shouldn't be too shocked if someone reposts it on a Forum down the road.

Hey, life has consequences (something the GOP is always prudishly reminding us of, but denying when it comes to them).

There's some naked pictures of me out on the internet. I told my partner about them, and he doesn't care. I'm glad I told him though, because a bitchy queen that he is friends with found them and tried to make a stink about it. By being HONEST and TAKING RESPONSIBILITY I didn't have to backpedal or make excuses, and we had a good laugh about it.

It's the kid's right to take pictures of himself barfing or grabbing another guy's junk or getting high or whatever. But if he is going to post them in a quasi-public forum, he needs to take RESPONSIBILITY for them.

As a technical detail for anyone who's curious, when you view bank statements online, the data is encrypted traveling between your computer and the bank's servers. The encryption can be broken, but it takes a damn lot of work, and there are easier methods of identity theft - like getting a virus onto your windows computer that installs a keylogger, which sends a record of every key you hit to someone who can then use your password to view your bank records him/her-but-probably-him-self. Any time the contents of the address bar begin with "https:" rather than "http:" the page you're viewing was sent encrypted. So, Windows Bad (but better than it used to be), non-Windows operating systems Good, Secure HTTP Good Enough.

Sure gomez, you mightn't be too shocked to see your previously private pee pee pictures posted, but is it right?

What makes the guarantee of privacy greater in responding to a craigslist ad, than in posting pictures to an exclusive website? Some asshole who doesn't respect your privacy can screw you either way.

I do see there's a difference in the degree of trust broken. However, when The Stranger was so (righteously) indignant at Fortuny, then turns around and gleefully publishes pictures that were only made available to them by breaking an implicit trust, well, it's just galling.

Maybe the MetBlogs folks just prefer the higher road? Dan, your argument seems to consist of, "well they did it first!!" with much stomping and crying and finger-pointing.

And that's not to say I'm not experiencing a good degree of schadenfreud right now.

Um, by far the easiest and most common way to steal people's identity isn't technical at all. You either raid their garbage, or just ask them for it. Good "social engineers" can talk a bank president's secretary out of the combination to the vault. Happens every day.