For those who tune into theself-proclaimed “gossip rag” Valleywag, you'll know that lastweek saw a flurry of posts about whether Tailrank founder KevinBurton deserved to have people snoop through his cell phone. A
Valleywag writer got caught at a party looking through Burton'scontacts on his cell phone, and in response, Valleywag posted a linkto an article I wrote for Wired magazine in June 2004 – anarticle where I quoted Burton talking in an off-the-cuff way aboutusing a wireless sniffer to grab cute women's AIM logins in wificafes so he could message them. Valleywag implied that Burton'scomments about reading women's network traffic justified the writersnooping on what was in his mobile.
Since then, Burton has become the buttof a lot of jokes on Valleywag and elsewhere. He's understandablypissed, and now he's claiming Wired defamed him because his commentsin my three-year-old article were “jokes”-- though he doesn'tdeny saying them. I want to set the record straight.
I do not _condonewhat Valleywag's writer did with Burton's mobile. In addition, the_Wired article where Burton was quoted is not defamatory. I quotedBurton accurately, and Burton OK'd the quotes with Wired'sfact-checker before the magazine published the article. Nor do I think what Burton told me in2004 was intended as ajoke. He presented his exploits as factual, and they were technically possible using the software he'd written. The articlein question does not call Burton a stalker, nor do I imply thatBurton “victimized” anyone with his geeky pickup methods. I portrayed him as a nerdy guy using his computer hacking skills to invent ingeniousways to meet girls. No women were harmed.
While I stand by the facts in my 2004
article, I now regret linking to Burton's comments from that oldarticle several weeks ago on Table of Malcontents. I was goofing around,
making fun of a San Francisco Chronicle article about wifi cafeswhere Burton was interviewed. In retrospect, I realize what I wrotewasn't funny, and I'm sorry to have dredged up stuff Burton saidyears ago.
But I also want to underscore thedifference between what I wrote in my article for Wired three yearsago, and what Valleywag is writing right now. I published afact-checked article about how hackers were using software to improvetheir dating lives. I spoke to Burton because he'd discovered someinteresting security flaws and sometimes had a little fun using thoseflaws to get dates. The point was the software, and the fact thatBurton got dates out of it was just icing on the cake. Valleywag, onthe other hand, is a blog whose mission is to publish gossip.
Gossip is not what I do, and that's notwhat I intended to do with my *Wired *article in 2004. I writeabout technology, pop culture, and sex, but I don't foster rumors. It's just not my job. Again, I'm sorry that my story and postcontributed to the gossip mill, but I stand by the facts of what I
wrote.
