A New York Times floor this morning about poor Fabrice Tourre , the colossal dick who sell fraudulent mortgage protection for Goldman Sachs , is base in part on secret emails between Tourre and his lawyer that the Times obtained from some weird ex - hippie artist who says she get them from some dude who found them in the garbage … hey , await , what ?
UPDATE : It appears that the Times misled me . Curtis Ellis , a congressman for Nancy Koan / Cohen — he was in a way with her relaying questions — phone to enjoin me that the computer at subject did indeed belong to to Fabrice Tourre . “ It ’s Fabrice ’s computer , ” he said . “ It say ‘ Fabrice Tourre ’ on the inauguration screen . The shithead just give it away in the trashroom of his fancy construction . ”
Ellis said that , contrary to the Times story , there was no “ streaming ” of email to the laptop . Rather , Koan / Cohen open up an e-mail program program once after she bugger off ahold of the electronic computer , and it mechanically downloaded a with child backlog quondam messages from the server onto the strong ride . No new emails came after that , he said , and Koan / Cohen delivered a copy of the electronic computer ’s difficult drive to the Times around April 2010 when she realized who Tourre was .
That is at betting odds with Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy ’s claim to me that “ none ” of the emails referenced in the storey “ come from Mr. Tourre ’s email system of rules . ”
Here ’s how the write up — which make the case that Tourre has been unfairly singled out for selling securities that were plan to go when literally everyone else was doing it — says the Times obtained draft legal filingswritten by Tourre ’s attorneys :
These legal replies , which are not public , were provide to the New York Times by Nancy Cohen , an artist and movie maker in New York also known as Nancy Koan , who says she found the materials in a laptop computer she had been give by a ally in 2006 .
The friend told her he had happened upon the laptop computer throw out in a garbage area in a business district flat construction . east - ring mail messages for Mr. Tourre continued streaming into the gimmick , but Ms. Cohen say she had ignore them until she heard Mr. Tourre ’s name in news reports about the S.E.C. case . She then provide the material to The Times . Mr. Tourre ’s attorney did not respond to an question for scuttlebutt .
That ’s some awe-inspiring hazard . It reminds us of the fourth dimension the Village Voice ’s Tony Ortegafound a cache of Harvey Weinstein ’s printed - out emailsin a TriBeCa garbage can . But it also resurrect some interrogative , as they say . Reuters ’ Felix Salmon , for representative , iswondering very loudlywhether or not Times newsperson Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson essentially hack into his electronic mail :
http://gawker.com/500786/how-did-the-voice-really-get-the-dirt-on-weinstein?tag=tonyortega
It goes without saying that Tourre is passing upset properly now , and feels violated by the NYT . He ’s not wrong to feel that mode . The query is whether the NYT was haywire to sleuth around his electronic mail while fish for a report – even if doing so mean hacking into his private account .
The Times ’ story of how and when it receive the emails is faint — and , one has to make bold give the luck , deliberately so . For case : When did the Times issue forth to possess the e-mail ? The late e-mail cited in the write up is date October 2010 , so we can accept that messages bound for Tourre continued “ streaming ” into the laptop computer up until them . If Koan / Cohen simply underprice the emails on Morgenson and Story at some point after that—”here ’s a large inbox”—then there ’s no material damage done . Koan / Cohen may be legally or ethically on the hook for continuing to download the emails , but that ’s not Story or Morgenson ’s problem .
Trouble is , the story says Koan / Cohen pass on the electronic mail over “ when she get a line Mr. Tourre ’s name in news reports about the S.E.C. case . ” Who have it away what she heard when , but Fabulous Fabrice Tourre first became a notorious Goldman Sachs villain in December 2009 , courtesy of a New York Times story by Louise Story and Gretchen Morgenson . And Tourre testified before Congress , generating a firestorm of publicity and crush interest group , in April 2010 . By October 2010 , the engagement of the last surreptitiously obtain e-mail , he was no longer in the newspaper headline . So maybe Koan / Cohen first became cognisant of who Tourre was some meter after October 2010 and just handed everything over .
Or maybe she contacted the Times before that , while the emails were still “ streaming . ” If that were the case , it could be a touchy situation for the paper . As attorney Maxwell Kennerly has take down , it ’s a crime to “ by choice acces[s ] without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication serving is provide . ” The Times ’ usance of the word “ streaming ” is odd , since in our experience you have to actively instruct a computer to retrieve emails — either through a web user interface or through an electronic mail program . If Koan / Cohen had the laptop for four eld — from 2006 to 2010 — one presumes she had to restart it at times . And the emails would n’t have been “ stream ” unless she establish the app program that retrieved them or visited the web site that incorporate them . In other Word , it ’s hard to imagine a scenario under which she did n’t intentionally access email intended for Tourre .
And if she alerted the Times to that state of personal business while it was still ongoing—”Hey , I ’m getting emails for this Goldman Sachs guy”—then Story and Morgenson ’s response is key . Did they say , “ Awesome , keep downloading them and ahead them to us ? ” If so , that sound close to a conspiracy to access email without authorization .
The weird thing is the Times refuses to say when Story and Morgenson first learned of Koan / Cohen ’s magical laptop computer , or when they obtained the emails . Here ’s spokeswoman Eileen Murphy ’s statement :
As we disclosed in our story , certain document were furnish to us by a diagnose source . The Times did not “ hack ” any electronic mail account or ask anyone to do so . We are confident that our reception and use of those document was in keeping with our journalistic standards and complied with the law .
Pushed on the issue of when Koan / Cohen first approached the paper , Murphy reply : “ We do n’t , as a matter of practice , expose this level of detail about our editorial decision qualification and newsgathering and I will level out again that we are confident that our decisions in this topic were in hold on with our journalistic standards and the police force . ”
Interestingly , Murphy also strongly suggested that the laptop at take did n’t belong to Tourre : “ All but one [ email referenced in the story ] came from the Senate news report and are public and none came from Mr. Tourre ’s email system . ” If it did n’t get along from Tourre ’s e-mail arrangement , it ’s tough to see how it came from his laptop .
As Choire Sicha has take note , Goldman is quite the professional organisation when it comes to data security , and electronic mail do n’t just “ stream ” unbidden to Goldman - authorized devices . So it ’s likely that it was a computer belong to one of his attorneys — if the laptop computer ’s “ Sent Items ” letter box was synced via IMAP or Microsoft Exchange , for case , with Tourre ’s lawyer ’s email account , then “ messages for Mr. Tourre ” would have continued streaming to it .
A woman answering the telephone set at Nancy Koan / Cohen ’s number said she was n’t uncommitted , and Tourre ’s attorney did not recall phone call .
[ mental image via Shutterstock ]
Goldman SachsHacking
Daily Newsletter
Get the good tech , science , and culture news in your inbox daily .
News from the future , delivered to your present tense .
You May Also Like
