The AP is still mad about a faked news story the FBI generated eight years ago in order to entrap a juvenile offender suspected of making bombs and threats.
The article was published online with the Associated Press’s icon prominently displayed in it and other identifying attributes, then a link to the phony headline was emailed to the suspect, in hopes he would click it and thereby download government malware.
The 15-year-old boy did just that, and got traced and snagged in the process, but it still doesn’t make the FBI’s dubious technique all right, says AP’s legal team.
“The FBI both misappropriated the trusted name of the Associated Press and created a situation where our credibility could have been undermined on a large scale," AP’s General Counsel advised Attorney General Eric Holder back in 2014 when first learning of the ploy.
According to the highly-respected news agency, their attempts to take the FBI to task over the unauthorized use of their trademarks and reputation fell flat, so they sued the Bureau this week, and not just for infringement and impersonation:
“It is improper and inconsistent with a free press for government personnel to masquerade as the Associated Press or any other news organization,” asserts the plaintiff.
“The FBI may have intended this false story as a trap for only one person. However, the individual could easily have reposted this story to social networks, distributing to thousands of people, under our name, what was essentially a piece of government disinformation.”
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is also a party to the civil action, which seeks not only redress from the U.S. government, but a full disclosure of how many times since the year 2000 its agents used faked news items to lure and arrest suspects.
