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<\/p>\nCybersecurity Expert\u2019s Stumble on Hacking Claims, and More Unsavory Posts Present Challenge for Joy Reid<\/b>
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Late on Thursday, The Washington Free Beacon<\/em>\u2018s Alex Griswold uncovered yet another set of blog posts by MSNBC host Joy Reid<\/a> from 2006.<\/p>\n Reid claimed earlier posts that appeared to be from her blog were hacked and the posts fabricated. The new posts\u00a0were allegedly discovered on the Wayback Machine, a project of the Internet Archive and\u00a0posted to social media<\/a>\u00a0last week by the same Twitter user who published posts by Reid last year.<\/p>\n Mediaite reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n These posts, from 2006, feature gay<\/a> jokes about, among others, Senator\u00a0Orrin Hatch<\/strong>\u00a0(R-UT) and then yet-to-be-confirmed Supreme Court Justice\u00a0Samuel Alito<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, look, Orrin Hatch is putting on his Supreme Court knee pads to save Alito,\u201d the author wrote during Alito\u2019s Senate hearing. \u201c\u2018Golly, you\u2019re really a swell guy<\/a>. Can I be on top next time\u2026?\u2019 Jeez\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n A half hour later, the author wrote: \u201cWould somebody please get Orrin Hatch some mouthwash and a $20 bill\u2026? He\u2019s got to be exhausted.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2026Other blog posts\u00a0unearthed by Griswold<\/a>\u00a0tout offensive stereotypes of Muslims, claim that Islam is inherently unable to coexist with Western democratic values, and link to the\u00a0Gateway Pundit<\/em>, a far-right conspiracy website.<\/p>\n The Daily Beast reported late on Thursday that claims by Reid\u2019s cybersecurity expert are not holding up<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u2026that consultant, Jonathan Nichols, had trouble producing the promised evidence. And what he did produce failed to withstand scrutiny, according to a Daily Beast analysis. Blog posts that Nichols claimed do not appear on the Internet Archive are, in fact, there. The indicators of hacked posts don\u2019t bear out.<\/p>\n The Daily Beast says that when asked to produce evidence of fraudulent posts and evidence of screenshot manipulation, Nichols pointed to several images<\/a>:<\/p>\n Nichols said those six posts are nowhere to be found in the Internet Archive. But that is not true.<\/p>\n Further searching on the Internet Archive turned up the posts for all six of the screenshots Nichols described as fakes, including\u00a0the one<\/a>\u00a0about Eddie Murphy. The Internet Archive\u2019s records indicate they were retrieved and stored between 2006 and 2009. And all six are exactly as they appear in the screenshots. A random check of other screenshots attributed to the blog produced the same result: None of the images are faked or doctored.<\/p>\n Nichols then acknowledged issues in the methodology of his verification to TDB. Nichols was also unable to provide, when asked, evidence of forensic clues which probe that Reid did not pen the entries, and provided two small examples of inconclusive evidence regarding timestamps on the posts, arguing that Reid could not have written the posts because she was on her show at the time.<\/p>\n Adds TDB<\/a>:<\/p>\n Today Nichols says Reid and her team no longer believe the archive was hacked, and the Internet Archive has denied any such manipulation could have occurred. \u201cWe found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions,\u201d\u00a0an archiver for the site said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n That means the supposed hacker was posting alongside Reid for years. According to Reichmann, that even included inserting updates in Reid\u2019s live<\/a> blog of the Alito hearing in January 2006. Reichmann claimed that the hacker was responsible for two consecutive updates sandwiched between Reid\u2019s legitimate ones. The updates report that Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch was using his questioning time to metaphorically fellate the judge. \u201cOh, look, Orrin Hatch is putting on his Supreme Court knee pads to save Alito,\u201d one line read. The post\u2019s title, which Reichmann says the hacker changed, was \u201cBrokeback Committee Room,\u201d another reference to the film about gay<\/a> lovers. All the contested material in the post is present in the earliest archived copy, which was captured the day after the hearing.<\/p>\n All of this alleged hacking apparently went unnoticed at the time by Reid.<\/p>\n Mediaite also reported that internet archive records reveal<\/a> that Nichols bragged about affiliations with neo-Nazis.<\/p>\n Yesterday, TDB said it had \u201chit pause\u201d on Reid\u2019s columns, and the FBI was reportedly brought in<\/a> to investigate.<\/p>\n The post Cybersecurity Expert\u2019s Stumble on Hacking Claims, and More Unsavory Posts Present Challenge for Joy Reid<\/a> appeared first on Towleroad<\/a>.<\/p>\n