Showing posts with label youtube comments scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youtube comments scandal. Show all posts

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Glendale City Council Member Zareh Sinanyan Admits Responsibility For Online Comments

In response to deeply felt criticism of his hateful online comments from members of the gay and Muslim communities at his first ever city council meeting, Glendale City Council Member Zareh Sinanyan has now publicly admitted responsibility and expressed regret for those comments.
He was particularly moved by the eloquent words of Glendale High student Zehra Siddiqui, who noted that Muslim students in Glendale are often bullied for their religion, and that it's important for role models in the community to take responsibility for their actions, whether good or bad.

From Ron Kaye's column in the Glendale News-Press:

"She was the one who got to me. After she spoke all I could think about was, 'Why would I say something that would insult someone like her?' I would just hope that she would forgive me, I didn't mean those things. They were obviously made in anger. 
"I will do my best to represent her to the best of my abilities. I see her as the future of America. By my actions, I will show who I really am, that those words are not me." 
Clearly, Sinanyan will be living in a fish bowl for quite a while, at the center of tensions over the ascendance of Armenians in the political, economic and cultural life of a city that was very different a quarter century ago when his family arrived in the area. 
For him, and for Glendale, this presents a great challenge to overcome divisions and a great opportunity to move forward and build a greater city together.

I absolutely agree with the closing line. I hope Sinanyan will continue in the spirit of healing and accountability and fully defuse tensions by also apologizing for attacking others, including me, rather than immediately taking responsibility for the comments he has now admitted to writing. If he offers such an apology, I will consider the matter resolved and wish him best of luck on the council.

Sinanyan is smart and was well prepared at the community forums. We both share a sincere interest in South Glendale issues and I'm sure he can put this behind him, both for his own good, and the good of the city.

Zareh, get in touch: tropicostation@gmail.com.




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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Zareh Sinanyan Attacks, But Still Hasn't Denied Writing Hateful Comments or Apologized For Them* (04/19 Update: He Has Now Admitted Responsibility & Expressed Regret)

*4/19/13 UPDATE: Zareh Sinanyan Has Finally Admitted Responsibility For Online Comments

The Glendale municipal election is over, and Zareh Sinanyan has secured a place on the Glendale City Council. A mere 356 votes separated him from Chahe Keuroghelian, who came in fourth. Voter turnout was low, at an estimated 18.2% of registered voters.

The Burbank Blog did a write up on the election results that I highly recommend reading.

If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you’ve also read the hateful comments that every available piece of evidence shows were written by Zareh Sinanyan over a period of several years. Not because I or anyone else says so, but because the allegations are verifiable using cached versions of both the comments and Zareh’s confirmed online accounts. If you haven’t read my previous posts on the allegations, please read them now to understand why this is serious:


 Neither Sinanyan, nor anyone else has provided one shred of evidence challenging his authorship of the comments. All it would have taken to fully exonerate Sinanyan was documentation from Google that his account had been hacked for the period in question. When asked directly if he wrote the comments, Sinanyan (campaign motto: "Bringing Transparency and Accountability to Glendale"), gave one of the most misleading non-denials the world has ever seen. 

 Truly, the video must be seen to be believed:




 So just to be crystal clear on this:

 Sinanyan has neither denied writing the hateful comments, nor apologized for their content.

Rather than responding to the evidence against him, Sinanyan and his supporters accused anyone drawing attention to the comments of conducting a “well-funded, well-organized racist smear campaign." Sinanyan himself, on the record, at a city council meeting, claimed that an anonymous source on *my blog* claimed their goal was to “take the Armenian community in general down.” This is 100% factually untrue. It was a cynical lie, meant to bully me and others who would demand an explanation into silence, close ranks within the Armenian community, and polarize Glendale along ethnic lines. I cannot find words to express my disgust.

The attacks directed at Councilmember Laura Friedman were far worse. For example, in an Armenian-language interview on Horizon TV posted on his official campaign Facebook page, Sinanyan compared Friedman to a Turk who doesn't care about Armenians* (minute 24):

SINANYAN: "And do you know what is unfortunate, maybe she has a small group of people with Armenian names, who aren't really true Armenians, they give her political legitimacy. In other words, you know when you meet some Turks and the first thing a Turk will say to an Armenian - and this is a really well known thing - is you're Armenian? I have many Armenian friends. And this is like Laura Friedman."

In Glendale, saying something like that is inflammatory and inexcusable. It should be denounced in the strongest possible terms by any organization or political candidate with a shred of decency**. The only reason these shameful tactics continue is because members of the community who should know better - most appallingly, The Glendale Teacher’s Association - remained silent.

So where does that leave us? It leaves me embarrassed for Glendale by what can only be explained by either tacit acceptance of bigotry or ignorance, enabled by low turnout. Local elections have a far bigger impact on day to day life than national elections, and proportionally, your vote is thousands of times more important to the outcome. Yet hardly anyone pays attention. Sinanyan was voted for by approximately 4% of Glendale's population. If you're catching up on this now and stayed home during the election, you deserve some of the blame.

Sinanyan will be sworn in at the City Council Reorganization meeting on April 15th.

 Until Sinanyan takes responsibility for his actions and apologizes for both the comments*** and the cynical, divisive response to a scandal of his own making, the community must continue to demand an explanation from Sinanyan for his behavior. 




PREVIOUSLY:



 notes:

 * I had this translated by two different Armenian-speaking friends to verify the context and accuracy of the translation.

 ** Here’s a challenge for my Armenian-speaking readers: if you see anyone involved with Glendale politics saying something hateful in Armenian language media, record the TV program or save the article and send it to me with a summary in English. I will have an Armenian speaker verify the accuracy of the content and, if it is offensive, will post the original media together with an English language transcript so that the community at large can judge for themselves. Alternately, if you see a non-Armenian candidate using racially charged or discriminatory rhetoric towards Armenians and have a recording or a quote in English language media, send me that too. There should be one standard for hateful racial rhetoric in Glendale, not an English-language standard and an Armenian-language standard. Such rhetoric should be universally condemned.

 *** Or provides actual exonerating evidence!

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Monday, March 11, 2013

Why It's Unlikely A "Hacker" Was Responsible For the Alleged Sinanyan Comments*

*4/19/13 UPDATE: Zareh Sinanyan Has Finally Admitted Responsibility For Online Comments

 If City Council candidate Zareh Sinanyan chooses to deny the allegations that he made dozens of obscene Youtube comments in front of the City Council on Tuesday night (PDF) rather than apologizing and moving forward with his campaign, I'm guessing he will claim some variation on "I was hacked!"

There are two possible scenarios that explain the events we’ve seen. One in which Sinanyan is responsible for the comments, and one in which a supposed “hacker” is responsible.

A commenter named D. Johnson on the Glendale News-Press article makes a concise case against a supposed “hack” quite nicely, that I've expanded on:
Five years ago, someone named "Zareh Sinanyan" posted a comment on YouTube that said, among other things, "your entire family is composed of whores and ****suckers." In that same 5-year-old comment thread on YouTube, that same "Zareh Sinanyan" also said "I'm a business litigator" 
Now, there are only a few possibilities here: 
1. The comment was posted 5 years ago by the same Zareh Sinanyan now running for Glendale City Council 
2. The comment was posted 5 years ago by some other Zareh Sinanyan, not the person currently running for Glendale City Council, but also a business litigator 
3. The comment was posted 5 years ago by some nasty person using the name "Zareh Sinanyan", knowing that Zareh Sinanyan would be a political candidate sometime in the future, and that the comment could then be used to smear him 
4. The comment was posted anonymously 5 years ago under a pseudonym that due to Google+ and YouTube interaction later became linked to the real name of Zareh Sinanyan 
The simple fact is that makes #4 by far the most likely option is that the comment was posted to YouTube 5 years ago - unless you believe that YouTube, which is owned by Google, the world's largest and most secure website, is in on the "conspiracy." 

Additional evidence against the possibility of a nasty person impersonating Mr. Sinanyan is that somehow, that person would need to:

More things that don't make sense if an impostor was involved:

Why would any impersonator conduct a thorough cover-up of the damaging posts right after the e-mail with the tip had been circulated but before most of the public was aware of the allegations?

Would an impostor really go to the trouble of creating FIVE YEARS worth of fake posts, then not leave them up online for the world to see? Wouldn’t they leave them up instead of hoping local media could put the pieces together using incomplete cached versions of the comments? I’ve found dozens of very nasty posts in the cached versions of the comments, but those who viewed the original e-mail and looked through the full set of comments made by the Youtube account before the cover-up saw many, many more incriminating posts that were deleted and not cached.

Which explanation is most likely to be true?

As with any event that one does not personally witness, you can only verify information to a degree of probability based on the evidence available. And every single piece of publicly available evidence in this matter thus far points to a high probability that Mr. Sinanyan was responsible for the content of the posts and attempted to hide his connection to the Youtube and Google account when knowledge of the obscene comments became public.


previously:




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Sinanyan Scandal Updates & Detailed Responses to His Defenders*

*4/19/13 UPDATE: Zareh Sinanyan Has Finally Admitted Responsibility For Online Comments

 In the wake of the scandal that broke here Tuesday linking City Council candidate Zareh Sinanyan to a large volume of obscene comments on various websites, additional prominent political leaders have rescinded their earlier support. In addition to Congressman Adam Schiff, Eric Garcetti, Wendy Greuel, and Paul Krekorian have also all retracted their endorsements. To Sinanyan’s credit, he has promptly removed references to them from his official campaign website. The ongoing scandal has since been covered in the Daily News, Glendale News-Press, LA Observed and LAist.

Most importantly, it was covered in this agenda item for this Tuesday’s City Council meeting (PDF), where the City Council will inquire into whether Mr. Sinanyan authored the comments. Mr. Sinanyan serves as a commissioner at the pleasure of the council, so if a majority of the council believes it’s likely he is responsible for the comments and that it is damaging to the reputation of the city to have him continue as a Community Block Grant commissioner, they are free to remove him from his appointed position.

Among Zareh supporters in the comment section on my previous posts (first post, second post) there there have been five main defenses against the allegations. As it is impractical for me to respond to each individual comment, here are the main defenses I've heard and a detailed response to each one.

**warning: many of the image links below contain offensive content**

1. It was a smear campaign by an anonymous source/shady political operative/Turkish Intelligence!

While I’m sure Mr. Sinanyan does have political enemies, and the timing is potentially damaging to his City Council campaign, these observations do nothing to challenge the volume of third-party evidence that shows that he is very likely to have said was is alleged to have said. As I documented in my previous posts, I did not publish any information from the original anonymous e-mail that was sent to many in Glendale without investigating it myself, verifying the links between the account that made the comments and Sinanyan's confirmed accounts and describing my process. The Glendale News-Press also investigated the claims and came to similar conclusions. Every bit of information alleged in the initial anonymous e-mail was verifiable by third party sources with no stake in the election, including the cached files of several of the world’s largest and most secure tech companies. The technical skills required to uncover the comments initially weren’t hacker-level ninjitsu - anyone who has ever used a search engine could find them just as easily by simply typing the candidate’s name into Google or Yahoo. It would be a smear campaign against Mr. Sinanyan if the allegations weren’t true, but as one commenter noted, using someone’s racist and vulgar statements to portray them as being racist and vulgar isn’t a smear; it’s accountability.

And yes, I did get a comment blaming it on Turkish Intelligence, as well as numerous anonymous comments decrying the anonymity of the original tip with no apparent sense of irony.


2. He was only attacking people who were denying the Armenian Genocide.

This was claimed by the highly partisan Asbarez Armenian newspaper. They are correct that some posts were on videos and comment threads that discussed the Armenian genocide, in which the Ottoman Turks are well documented to have killed 1.5 million Armenians between 1915-1920; but many of the disturbing posts were on videos and topics unrelated to the horror of the genocide, including MMA videos.

3. The comments weren’t really so bad! Who hasn’t gotten into a heated argument online?

I certainly have. But not like this, this or this. Especially disturbing are the numerous posts referring to Muslims as “raghead cockroaches” and wishing them death. I have many, many more examples of these comments that will singe your hair. The sheer volume and inventiveness of obscenity is stunning. If you think this is acceptable language for a candidate for higher office, so be it, but it would be far-fetched for Mr. Sinanyan to claim that he didn’t know that city commissioners and candidates for elected office would be held to a higher standard of behavior than the average Youtube flame-war participant.


4. Perhaps Sinanyan wrote the comments, but an anonymous hacker got into his home computer and made them public! That hacker should be prosecuted!

The allegations in the initial anonymous e-mail had nothing to do with linking the comments to a specific computer or IP address; the allegations are linked to Sinanyan via his Google account, which he could log into from any computer he had access to. The comments themselves were openly published online and didn’t require any “hacking” to view - they were all freely visible under Mr. Sinanyan’s name. Additionally, the connections shown between the Youtube account and the Google account were all made using information that Mr. Sinanyan himself had chosen to make public in various online profiles, no special access or “hacking” required.


5. He didn’t write the comments at all - he was hacked by an impostor!

This is the big argument that keeps coming up, so I've written a post with an analysis of why a "hack" of the necessary scope and duration is highly unlikely.



Posted by Scott at 6 comments
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Thursday, March 7, 2013

Adam Schiff Withdraws Sinanyan Glendale City Council Endorsement in Light of Allegations*

*4/19/13 UPDATE: Zareh Sinanyan Has Finally Admitted Responsibility For Online Comments

Congressman Adam Schiff has officially withdrawn his support for Glendale City Council candidate Zareh Sinanyan in light of the allegations that became public at Tuesday's City Council meeting.


From Patrick Boland, Communications Director for Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Burbank):
"When this issue was brought to his attention on Tuesday, Congressman Schiff immediately directed his staff to inform the Sinanyan campaign that he was withdrawing his endorsement.  In the letter to the Sinanyan campaign from his campaign, Schiff confirmed that he could not support anyone who made such deeply offensive and bigoted statements."
The letter sent by Congressman's staff is below:
"It has been alleged that Mr. Sinanyan may have posted deeply offensive and bigoted  messages on websites and social media platforms.  We certainly hope that this is not the case, and that he has no connection to the vile comments that are being attributed to him. 
Until this matter is resolved, however, Mr. Schiff must withdraw his endorsement and ask that his name not be included on any campaign materials.  The comments alleged are deeply disturbing and not befitting any member of the public let alone one seeking to  represent the city on an elected body." 

Here's some background on the allegations that I published on Tuesday: I received a tip about the comments on Monday morning via an anonymous e-mail. I know others in Glendale received the same e-mail, and I've had several people contact me this week (before I published my post) asking if I knew about the alleged comments. So I didn't uncover the comments per se, though I was the first person to publish them besides Sinanyan himself. When I first received the e-mail, I checked and verified that all of the comments were online from the account linked to Sinanyan's name, that all of the timestamps were correct (since some of the posts go back five years), and I verified that all of the information in the screen captures I received was accurate and not Photoshopped. And indeed, all of the comments were publicly available online at Youtube at that time, with that time stamp information, under the name Zareh Sinanyan. I also looked at other comments made by the same account, and there were dozens, maybe hundreds of additional comments, all similarly vulgar. By Monday afternoon the comments started disappearing from YouTube, presumably as Sinanyan got word that people were poking around his comment history. Also, I believe that for most of the account's history, it was an "anonymous" account -- but that Sinanyan unwisely chose to link his YouTube account to his Google Plus account, which retroactively revealed him as the author of the formerly anonymous comments.

I also would also like to highlight criticism of the allegations from the lively comment section under the initial post:

Anonymous commented: 
"I can't believe the amount of people who have given these accusations any real merit. What if I took your name and doctored comments on your behalf, passing them out to your neighbors saying you're a thief? What would you do?
These are a fool's attempt to discredit Zareh, who is the right choice for this city."

To address the very valid concerns of this commenter:

I fully agree with you that it would be terrible if someone doctored comments to incriminate a candidate. I am very concerned about that very possibility when dealing with anonymously sourced information. As a result, I took extensive steps to verify myself that all of the comments in the screen captures I received were accurate with what had been published online over a period of many years. In doing so, I concluded that the images I received were not doctored, that the comments were easily findable, on many sites, and part of a much larger pattern of vitriolic comments going back years. Most of the trail of comments is still online in some form. Googling "Zareh Sinanyan" and various obscenities yields many results on many sites over a long period of time. 
Additionally, I checked Sinanyan's Google+ profile (The name has since been rather preposterously changed to "Thomas Paine," but the original name is still visible in Google searches. The Youtube account is part of his Google+ Profile), and it lists his Google + connections as M Toumajan, Hovanes Manucharyan, Sarkis Jacob Babachanian, and Stepan Boyajian. I checked Sinanyan's Facebook profile -- the completely official profile through which he comments on his campaign -- and every single one of those people is Facebook friends with Zareh through his official Facebook account.
This proved to me that it was overwhelmingly likely that the Youtube account belonged to the same Zareh Sinanyan and not an impostor or someone with the same name. 
respectfully, 
Scott Lowe
Tropico Station

The Sinanyan campaign has not addressed the matter publicly. The Glendale City Council will be inquiring into the matter at next Tuesday's council meeting.




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