11:09pm: Apart from whatever criminal charges could arise, the league’s punishment of the Cardinals (if any) will depend upon “how high knowledge of [the] breach reached,” according to Passan (links to Twitter).
If the investigation reveals only a single “rogue employee,” there may not be any significant repercussions for the organization, says Passan. But severe penalties could result if top officials are shown to have acted improperly. The timeline of league action will be slowed by the fact that the FBI investigation remains private, Passan adds.
10:50pm: The FBI investigation into the breach of the Astros’ computer systems is in its final stages, according to the Houston Chronicle’s David Barron and Evan Drellich. A source tells the Chronicle that “the suspects [have] been narrowed to a group of four to five individuals within the Cardinals organization.”
Per the report, in addition to the 2013 breach discussed in the New York Times piece that broke the story of the investigation, impermissible access to the system also occurred in March of last year. That would seem to coincide with a report from Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports indicating that the computer which gained entry to the Astros’ systems had been traced to a house in Jupiter, Florida — the Spring Training home of the Cardinals — which was occupied by multiple St. Louis employees. (Notably, also, the information released publicly appears to line up with the timing reported by the Chronicle.)
The Cardinals have conducted internal interviews with their personnel regarding the matter, Drellich adds on Twitter, and Derrick Goold of the St. Louis Post Dispatch notes that many members of the front office have hired attorneys. St. Louis released a statement earlier today indicating that the club “has fully cooperated with the investigation and will continue to do so.” Per Goold’s report, that included turning over computers to the FBI back in Feburary.
As things stand, it remains unreported precisely which Cardinals personnel are suspected of involvement with the actual computer breach — let alone what involvement organizational higher-ups may have had in the infraction, the public disclosure of information, and/or events subsequent. Needless to say, regardless of who is ultimately deemed to have committed the breaches, those questions will remain a source of intense interest going forward.
Buckets being filled with sweat by Cardinals fans every time a new story comes out. It gets worse and worse.
Ah, here is where the Cards will get off… the investigation will reveal that it was the actions of a single rogue employee and no one in the Cardinals front office had a clue what happened…….Cards will get a slap on the wrist, the employee will take the sword for the team (compensated for it I am sure) and all will be well……Just like in every sport…. nothing to see here, everyone ignore the FBI, buy your jerseys and tickets…..
If 4 or 5 people are being possibly implicated thus far, seems more then just a single rouge employee, especially in a home where multiple employees lived. At this point the burden would be on that person on persons to prove they never had any conversations or shared any of the information and was never discussed and that they just kept to themselves which I doubt. I doubt it was someone just being nosy and more so someone trying to get information that could actually use.
Why would that person or persons be responsible to prove they did not tell anyone? What happened to innocent until proven guilty? It would be on the investigator(s) to prove that the information leaked further (which I think for sure happened) but they aren’t just going to assume it did and punish a whole orginization without concrete evidence that it slipped further then a spring training house used by 4 employees.
The employee will not take the sword for the team because the sword is federal prison time. You don’t want that on your resume and the is no “compensation” that will make it palatable.
You may be right, it may be only one or twp low level employees involved but the Feds will threaten prison time to everyone until they find the highest ranking person who knew.
This is a FEDERAL crime, not Deflatgate.
TBH, not really!
So far, the story seems to be that a guy probably put his password on a post-it on his desk and at some point while working for St. Louis someone saw that post-it and decided to save it for a rainy day. Lunhow goes off to work for the Astros instead (and I remember it not exactly being a harmonious departure) and probably declines to bring along at least one of the people with access to his obviously rather unsecure password.
Lunhow starts his Astros job, and immediately uses the exact same password at the new job as he did the old job. This is pretty dumb. Exceptionally dumb if you’ve ever written a password down or given it to anyone else at all. Period.
It’s not really hacking, despite the FBI getting involved. There are other crimes associated (much like entering someone’s house without permission even if you have a key is not breaking and entering but it is illegal access or something, I forget the exact term) and it’s significantly less severe.
One person will get fired, that’s about it. No big deal. It’s not even a real story, other than the FBI getting involved which makes people think it’s far more serious than it actually is. If there was ANY juice to the story, details would have leaked by now as they do in any interesting case. This one’s boring. Sorry.
I think the terms you are looking for are trespass and unauthorized use. But regardless of that, the severity will depend on how the information was used if at all. If it was just someone just snooping and being nosy then not as big of a deal if that information was used by the front office.
You’re right it’s not really hacking. Then again if I leave the door to my house open you still don’t have the right to come in and take my stuff.
How is it getting worse? As long it’s not high level employees, there’s not much to be done besides fire everyone involved. The initial story looked worse.
Yes, the initial story looked worse. I went back to read it again after all the smoke and confusion. There was one additional report that computers were confiscated in February, meaning we may be very close to the conclusion of this “happening.” The timing of Schmidt’s article indicates to me that neither MLB or the FBI wanted to break this baseball story and that the scoop was well planned with reliable information.
link to nytimes.com
Why exactly was it accessed illegally twice then? It was clearly to try and hurt Luhnhow at the very least. How many teams didn’t want to deal with them since they were worried their info and talks would be leaked? There’s real presidence here for a lot of things. Manfred will come down hard
There are possible subplots to this narrative that might include everything from high-level front-office corporate espionage, to a rogue database coder attacking lunhow for taking his sandwich out of the lunchroom fridge, to a different database coder that intentionally logged in to the astros system from an easily tracable IP to burn someone in the St Louis organization for something else.
What explaination you’re liable to believe is entirely dependant on your own tolerance for tin-foil hat conspiracy theories and whether you’re predisposed as a fan (or anti-fan) of the teams in question.
All we *really* know right now is that the freaking FBI is involved because it fits at least a procedural definition of inter-state corporate espionage – so they have to be, and the person (or someone in the group of persons) responsible was dense enough to leak the stolen data to some third-cousin of wiki-leaks and ultimately Deadspin. Who within the Cardinals organization knew this was happening, and to what level the stolen information was actually used is *entirely speculative* at this point.
I agree completely. Once you could possibly convince me was to hurt Luhnhow or embarass him. The 2nd time in my opinion confirms that it was more than that. To be honest I don’t care how it was used. The fact that it could have been used to help them with scouting reports, trades, the draft etc is extreemely huge to me. That affects the integrity of the game. If he doesn’t come down hard he will be looked at as a pushover. This is his chance to show everyone what kind of Commish he will be going forward. As you stated he will come down hard.
I’m perfectly innocent… where’s my attorney?
Just reading the comments on this and other sites is worth the laughs they generate. Some think it makes Watergate pale by comparison. Others state what they think is the real story. The smartest ones say “wait until the full story is released by the FBI/MLB/Cardinals/Astros”. That is what I will do.