Yet More Proof It Is a Very Bad Idea to Call the Police (Even the FBI)

This is really a incredible and bizarre story.

Eric Garris, executive director of AntiWar.com, contacted the FBI after he received a letter warning that AWC was about to come under a major hacker  attack. The result? The FBI flipped the story around. They investigated Garris and AW editorial chief Justin Raimondo for planning a hack attack on the FBI web site. Anyone who has followed AWC, and knows Garris and Raimodo,  knows the FBI speculation is totally absurd.

From RT:

  Heavily censored documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request indicate that Eric Garris, managing editor of Antiwar.com, had simply notified the FBI that Antiwar.com was the target of a hack. Somehow, months later, the FBI filed Antiwar.com as a potential cyber threat against the FBI, a mistake that lasted for years and effectively gave the FBI the power to monitor the inner workings of the site, which is often critical of US foreign policy.

“The improper investigation led to Garris and [Editorial Director Justin] Raimondo being flagged in other documents, and is based on inappropriate targeting and sloppy intelligence work the FBI relied on in its initial memo,” Julia Mass, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney in northern California, told The Guardian.

According to the documents, Garris received an email on September 12, 2001 with a subject reading, in all capital letters, “YOUR SITE IS GOING DOWN.”

“Be warned assholes, I’ll be posting your site address to all the hack boards tonight, telling them about the little article at the moscowtimes and all. YOUR SITE IS HISTORY,” the message continued, although much of the transcript was redacted by the FBI.

On January 7, 2002 -months after Garris forwarded the messages to the FBI office – the bureau classified the notifications as “A THREAT BY GARRIS TO HACK FBI WEBSITE.”