The Associated Press is suing the FBI over allegations government agents used a fake news story to plant malware on the PCs of suspected criminals.
The news agency, along with the Reports Committee for Freedom of the Press,
filed suit against the Feds on Thursday in the US District court in Washington, DC, asking the court to force the FBI to hand over all information relating to an alleged 2007 online impersonation.
According to the
AP lawsuit (PDF), the incident occurred when the FBI was investigating bomb threats made against a high school in Washington State. Hoping to lure out the person behind a MySpace account connected to the threats, FBI agents came up with
an elaborate ruse: they constructed a legit-looking webpage with a fake news story under the AP masthead and the headline "Bomb threat at high school downplayed by local police department." Also buried within the site was a script to covertly install a piece of spyware. A link to the story was then sent to the MySpace account in a private message.
