Now, the FBI assumes it can impersonate your new sources. Turns out, the FBI set up a fake website in 2007 to plant spyware on the computer of a 15-year-old who was suspected of emailing bomb threats to a Washington high school. The FBI created a horribly written story (Found on page 4 in these documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation) and attributed it to the Associated Press and floated it out to their student suspect on his Myspace profile in hopes he’d take the bait. “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,” Seattle Times Editor Kathy Best wrote in a statement (on what we assume is the real Seattle Times). “Not only does that cross a line, it erases it. Our reputation and our ability to do our job as a government watchdog are based on trust. Nothing is more fundamental to that trust than our independence – from law enforcement, from government, from corporations and from all other special interests. The FBI’s actions, taken without our knowledge, traded on our reputation and put it at peril.” More…