Blue Collar Muse

Jim Cooper, Democrat from Tennessee’s 5th District, recently got his ears pinned back in a formal committee hearing. Cooper held up a sheaf of papers and went for the kill while questioning Glenn English, CEO of the NRECA, a national coalition of electricity providing cooperatives. Cooper stated the material he was talking about came from the NRECA’s private, password protected site which he had accessed. At that point, English said he regretted Cooper’s introduction of the topic and noted that NRECA counsel had advised him Cooper was under investigation for criminal violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

As expected, Cooper denies any wrongdoing. He first asked the NRECA for the information and was refused. He later obtained the username and password from an NRECA employee which he used to access the site and get the information he was previously denied access to. In a Clintonesque distortion of language, Cooper now equates using the login information of another with being personally authorized to view the site. Would Jim object if someone with a key to his office, say the cleaning woman, gave her key to someone who used it to enter his office and rifle his files? Exactly! But one man’s authorized entry is another man’s breaking and entering. Cooper further justified his actions by saying NRECA’s customers had the right to know what was going on.

While opinions vary as to the law in these cases, the statute mentioned seems pretty straightforward. It appears there are a couple of places which may provide Cooper some legal problems. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act states in part,

a) Whoever– …

(2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains– …

(A) information contained in a financial record of a financial institution, …

C) information from any protected computer if the conduct involved an interstate or foreign communication;

and,

a) Whoever– …

(6) knowingly and with intent to defraud traffics (as defined in section 1029) in any password or similar information through which a computer may be accessed without authorization, if–

(A) such trafficking affects interstate or foreign commerce;

have broken the law. The definitions of the terms “exceeds authorized access”, “financial record” and more are provided later in the document. They don’t help the Congressman’s cause.

Whether Jim Cooper’s actions were criminal would seem to boil down to: 1) Did Congressman Jim Cooper access the site in question? 2) Was he authorized to do so?; 3) Does the site contain any financial records?; 4) Do any site records pertain to either interstate communication, commerce or both?; 5) Did Cooper obtain the password via any means definable as “trafficking”?

#1 -The video records Cooper’s admission he was on the site. Check! #2 - Having been denied access to the information previously, Cooper knew he was not authorized. That he bypassed that denial in the way he did further demonstrates he knew he was not authorized. Check! #3 - Also per the video, Mr. English testified the site contained both 401K and retirement records for NRECA associates. It is not unreasonable to assume those records related to financial institutions as the NRECA is not itself a financial institution. Check! #4 - The NRECA is a national coop with 900 members in 47 states. That settles the question of do the affairs of the NRECA include interstate commerce and might their site contain interstate communication. Check! #5 - This would depend on the definition of the term “Traffic”. What did Cooper do to get the login information? Must money change hands? Could providing something non-monetary, but valuable, such as promising to take care of the leaker if discovered and find him work elsewhere be considered trafficking? If so, perhaps a final - Check! - is in order.

As mentioned, Cooper denies knowledge of any FBI investigation. Of course he does. The situation definitely could produce one. Is it happening? We’ll have to wait and see. Cooper gets cover from the FBI itself as they don’t comment on ongoing investigations. Cooper could be lying through his teeth and we wouldn’t know until the FBI goes on the record. Of course, the Congressman could always “authorize” the FBI to “release information we’ve been denied access to previously” on the premise that, especially in an election year “the citizens of Tennessee’s 5th District have the right to know if their Congressman engaged in illegal activities” punishable by either 5 or 10 years in the slammer for a first offense and possible fines on top of that. Those of you with some time on your hands, stop by and enjoy the shades of blue I can turn while holding my breath waiting.

Cooper, by any estimation, is not a powerful or influential member of Congress. He merely fills a seat and the “D” after his name provides power for those who are. Just another career politician who knows nothing of life outside the Beltway. Despite being a Rhodes Scholar, he isn’t even bright enough not to confess to a crime on video. Is this the sort of politician we want in Washington? Do we really want someone making laws for the rest of us who cannot be bothered to obey them himself? There’s an election coming where we can decide exactly that. See you at the polls.

Blue Collar Muse

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Remember Nancy Pelosi’s comments as the Democrats took back the House in 2006? She said,

‘”The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D.C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”

The emphasis needs to be placed on the word “intend”. At the time, the ability of the Democratic party to keep that promise was shown to be questionable by their handling of their own in the high profile cases of men like William Jefferson, Alcee Hastings and John Murtha.

There may be another stain to the Democrat’s reputation in yesterday’s allegations Tennessee’s 5th District Representative, Jim Cooper, is under investigation by the FBI. For the moment, the matter is in “He said, she said” mode. The allegations of an FBI investigation have been made, Rep. Cooper’s office has denied any knowledge of an investigation and an FBI spokesman said, “The FBI does not comment on statements or accusations made by others concerning its investigative activity.” What we do know is this.

The charges came up in the course of Cooper’s investigation into the practices of a Texas electric co-op. The Tennessean’s Bill Theobald reports,

Thursday’s hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee focused on salaries paid to leaders of the Pedernales Electric Cooperative Inc. in Texas and to spending by the cooperative.

Cooper used the Texas case as a stepping-off point for his longstanding contention that some cooperatives are mismanaged and that they fail to return excess revenue to their members.

The Pedernales Electric Cooperative is a member of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA). NRECA’s CEO, Glenn English, was testifying before the committee and made his allegation during his testimony as Cooper sought to expand his probe from Pedernales in particular to coops in general. MSNBC reports English charged:

The reference that he made was with regard to a private Web site and gave even a Web site that provides access to members’ 401ks and also their retirement benefits. NRECA’s counsel has advised me that Mr. Cooper is currently under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for his unauthorized access and downloading of information from NRECA’s password-protected Web site, and that is in violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Mr. English’s allegation came after Rep. Cooper displayed a report and asked English to comment on the information it contained. Some of that information came from the NRECA’s site. Cooper also published information from the site in an article in the Harvard Legislative Review and sourced the password protected site in a footnote. WSMV-Channel 4’s Cara Kumari has excellent video, here.

At issue will be Cooper’s right to access the material in question. Cooper admitted in the committee meeting that he viewed the site and obtained information from it. He did so using someone else’s password and username. Cooper claims a person authorized to access the site provided him with his login codes after NRECA denied Cooper’s request for access to confidential NRECA material. Cooper claims the NRECA material should be public, in his opinion, and maintains he did no wrong in accessing the private site, downloading and making the NRECA’s private material public. Channel 4’s Kumari notes the station asked an attorney whether Cooper’s behavior is illegal and was told the law was constantly changing in this area. What Cooper did may or may not be a violation of the law.

Which brings us back to the question of Democrats and integrity, honesty and ethics. It is not required that one commit a crime to demonstrate a lack of character. If there are criminal charges filed in this case, it simply makes it worse than it already is. But Cooper’s behavior fails all three tests even if he doesn’t face criminal charges.

His admission to personally using material he knew he was denied access to may not be the evidence of a crime it appears to be. But neither is it evidence of integrity. Claiming the use of someone else’s access codes is the same as having authorization to access the material himself may not be the laughable attempt at CYA it looks like, but that doesn’t make it ethical. Justifying his actions by applying an issue which impacts government to a private entity may not be an ignorant application of the question of Open Records, but it cannot be classified as honest.

Regardless of how the criminal aspect of the matter plays out, Jim Cooper’s arrogance has revealed he believes his opinions are a better gauge of conduct than the law or common sense, that he is unwilling to be bound by respect for the rights of others if he can score political points by behaving otherwise and, that one of his prime guiding principles is that the end justifies the means.

Those characteristics are horrible in an elected representative at any level of government! They do, however, work well for defense attorneys. I wish Rep. Cooper the best of luck in finding one that well qualified to represent him in the event he goes to trial.

Blue Collar Muse

SEE ALSO:

Hypocrisy, FISA, Guns, and Government: Jim Cooper Abuses His Congressional Throne at RedState

Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) and NRECA CEO Glenn English at Nashville is Talking. Nice transcript and video.

TN Representative Jim Cooper Protected from Computer Crime? at Bear Creek Ledger.

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