A couple of days ago I was asked by a friend to see if I wanted to apply my photo analysis and forensic experience to assist Congressman Weiner. Keep in mind, my friend isn't affiliated with the congressman -- or even the government. He thought I should reach out to the congressman and offer my assistance. I quickly said "No."

Ghosts, UFOs, celebrities, and congressmen. These are four of the fastest way to be the center of a controversy where you will never win, even if you are absolutely correct. There's no money in it, and it will never help your reputation.

Although I chose not to get involved in the investigation, something didn't sound right to me. They said that Weiner sent out a photo of his lower appendage. The thing about body parts: if it is yours, then no amount of denial will resolve that fact -- people won't deny it long term because it will eventually come down to "prove it". They may not volunteer the identification, but they won't deny the accusation.

However, if it isn't yours, then you would deny it immediately and continually deny it. While you may not want to whip out your proof, you will deny the accusation. Weiner immediately denied posting it and never changed his denial. That screams frame-up to me since Weiner is acting like someone innocent and not caught rightred-handed.

One Small Artifact

Every computer forensic specialist that I know is like a bulldog. They look over mounds of data for one tiny oddity. And when they find that one abnormality, they will latch on and investigate it to death. I know a guy who spent three weeks trying to find out why one byte in a browser cookie had the wrong value -- it turned out that the file had been tampered and modified, blowing his case wide open.

While I chose not to investigate whether the dongle attributed to Congressman Weiner was really from his pants, another person did. The write-up by Joseph Cannon is outstanding. A must read: http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2011/06/weiner-affair-close-to-solution-but-i.html

Cannon found one oddity: a missing URL that should have been visible on the picture's web page. He tracked down the cause and discovered that it came from an exploit. The exploit allows someone other than you to place a photo in your yFrog photo stream. (yFrog is a picture sharing site, similar to Twitpic, Flickr, and Google's Picasa.) Since the URL was missing, it means that the account holder (Congressman Weiner) did not post the image.

His finding appears to be conclusive. Congressman Weiner was framed. He never posted pictures of his genitalia.

About Time

Like any good investigator, Cannon took it the next step. Now that he knew the photo's placement was fake, so who was responsible for framing the congressman? Cannon looked at the timing of events. He found that a person named Dan Wolfe (1) predicted that a scandal was coming, (2) was the person who broke the news about the scandal -- within minutes of the framed photo being inserted into the Congressman's picture stream, and (3) provided fake evidence regarding the photo, including a photo with the wrong dimensions and metadata did not match the camera.

Interestingly, Dan Wolfe has reportedly deleted his Twitter account. (Good thing the Library of Congress keeps a copy!)

The "Wolfe Eats Weiner" theory is not the only one out there. The DailyKos has a different theory. They are blaming Andrew Breitbart and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. It seems that Breitbart has been gunning for Weiner over some kind of financial investigation involving Thomas, and Breitbart ran with Wolfe's story without checking his facts. (I'm holding back the puns about not being so breit, crying wolfe, and an exposed weiner.)

Bigger With Excitement

Now we have a big, juicy scandal that is growing in size and throbbing for attention. It includes a framed congressman, a conspiracy theorist who doesn't mind framing people (Dan Wolfe), a major media magnate (Andrew Breitbart) who can control how and what people believe, and even a Supreme Court Justice (will anyone get a fair trial?). Each of these people have the power to make your life a living hell. Already Joseph Cannon has reported receiving threats and anti-Semitic comments. And notice how the media has stopped reporting on this? (Could Breitbart be using his media muscles to keep his involvement out of the limelight?)

This story is nowhere near done. Did Cannon do the right thing by proving that the congressman was framed? Absolutely. Am I glad that I didn't get in the middle of this messy scandal? Yup.

I owe a huge thanks to Xenon for all of the articles. And to HMK: No, still not interested in being involved.

Update: 2011-06-06
Late this afternoon, Weiner held a press conference and admitted everything. The pictures, the postings, the lies, etc. Perhaps it is because I investigate too many conspiracies, but I sense something wrong here. Years ago, a couple of police detectives told me that they spend as much time (or more) disproving false admissions as they do proving real guilt. That's right, lots of people admit to things that they didn't do.

While I cannot see why he would lie about the pictures, there are other things that still seem "messy" to me, and not cleared up by his admission of guilt. For example, if he really did do it, then why did Wolfe delete his Twitter account? Wouldn't he want to stick around and say "I told you so"? And why was the URL missing from this image but not from Weiner's other images? Most importantly, why did yFrog suddenly disable the exploit that caused the URL to be missing?

Perhaps it is just the conspiracy theories getting to me... or maybe someone has even more dirt on Weiner and this was his easy way out. If it does turn out that he lied about claiming to have done everything, then it will likely be the end of his career (lies are bad, lying about lying is even worse) -- as if this isn't the end of his career already. As I said earlier, I'm sure that the story won't stop here, and I'm glad I'm not involved.