And forgive me for considering that a raging liberal that loathes Fox News might have done a little more here than he is leading on. This may come as a surprise to you, but people charged with crimes often say they didn't do it when they did, or as I suggested, at least did something a little nefarious.

Hmmm, can't put my finger on it, but this reminds me of someone in the news a lot the past few years. This person I'm thinking of is surrendering to authorities down in Georgia as I type this.

This case is about using nefarious methods to obtain footage/information. Not sure how your point about edits relates.

But every news outlet edits the crap out of all their interviews and messaging to fit their narrative and objective - There is no question about that.

I don't agree at all. I think a better equivalency would be someone else obtaining a key to an office building and the journalist taking that key to enter and steal files. There's no reasonable way to defend that.

I'm cool with the key under the doormat analogy, except it was placed there by a guy he worked with to obtain it and placed it there for him.

If I place a key under my doormat and get broken into, I might be an idiot for the egregious security failure but that doesn't mean anyone is free to walk into my house. I sure hope anyone that walks thru my door is prosecuted for breaking an entering.

Yes. Poor security is not a basis for legal defense for theft.

What was stolen? There are court cases that do not interpret what Burke did as theft. What was downloaded was on a public link that anybody with the URL could access; previous cases have ruled that simply creating a very complicated, complex link that's still publicly accessible is a "speed bump" (their word) and does not make the content any less public. And that downloading/viewing/sharing that content is not theft.

So this is a really unique case where Burke accessed feeds that were set up in a way that other courts have ruled he has a right to because they were public and on the open web. But he seems to have found those feeds by logging into a site using credentials published somewhere on the web.

Hence my analogy of unlocking the door of a house missing three walls. Had he walked around the back of the house, it's pretty clear how courts would rule as there's already case law. And that's what's super weird about this case -- if you put a password in front of a bunch of public URLs, are they less public?
[/QUOTE]You're acting like he typed in a random URL for funsies and it popped up some interesting info. If he obtained login data with the intent to secure information, that's really all there is to it. I don't care about your empty walls analogy, and at this point we are so deep in this analogy the picture I have of this hypothetical building we've created is like something out of a Christopher Nolan film.

[QUOTE=BillyTheCat] Hopefully, we still have a thing in this country call due process. Tim has never been a fan of mine when he was active on this board. I have always respected him, like I do many of you in your field of knowledge. But as of 4/22/2025, Tim Burke is an innocent man who was doing a job, until the process says otherwise, he’s still an innocent man. Some of you all trying the case and you only know the published side of the story.