WE HAVE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS BECAUSE IT RENDERS A PUBLIC SERVICE:

The FBI in Seattle created a fake news story on a bogus Seattle Times web page to plant software in the computer of a suspect in a series of bomb threats to Lacey's Timberline High School in 2007, according to documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in San Francisco.

The deception was publicized Monday when Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C., revealed it on Twitter.

In an interview, Soghoian called the incident "outrageous" and said the practice could result in "significant collateral damage to the public trust" if law enforcement begins co-opting the media for its purposes. [...]

"We are outraged that the FBI, with the apparent assistance of the U.S. Attorney's Office, misappropriated the name of The Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect," said Seattle Times Editor Kathy Best.

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