The "Stolen" Laptop

With the newest German scandal in full-swing....it got brought up in Focus this morning....that the guy at the center of this police probe (a SPD political figure)....sent an official fax to the Bundestag representative....that his government-procured laptop was stolen.

This guy...Sebastian Edathy....got pointed out by the Canadians for downloading x-rated kid videos....that went through the Bundestag server system....to his official laptop.

The German cops, I suspect....are stuck.  They can show that he sent a request via the Bundestag server to the Canadian server.....getting the video.  But you need to have the hard drive in your hand to show the final bit of evidence to convict anyone in a German court.  Even if it was over-written....you could pick up enough pieces on the hard drive....to show the file existed, and thus the case is complete.  End of story.

Well...in this case....with the advanced warning that he got....there's nothing to collect.  Convicting in a German court?  The slam-dunk effect is gone....maybe there's a small bit of conviction that you could do....but with appeals and the nature of the internet....I suspect that he will walk free.

Being an American and watching this unfold.....you see an odd crowd asking bold questions....journalists, the Linke Party (the former communists), and the Greens.  That's it.  Both the CDU and SPD....consider the episode to be wrapped up and just let the cops clean up with the final bit of the mess.

Late yesterday....near almost six PM....the SPD guys finally announced that they'd kicked Edathy officially out of the party.  He's not a member any longer.....so the media can quit coming over to them for comments.

As for the stolen laptop?  I'd take a guess that it's deep in some river or lake....not some state-run garbage yard or buried in some guy's backyard.  How could a guy be stupid enough to download onto his government laptop?  I'd suggest a drug test on the guy.....and establish that he's doing a couple of drugs....which makes him a nutcase to deal with.

I think most of the Bundestag guys are sitting there....hoping for another NSA revelation by Snowden....to take this spotlight away from this mess.  That's about the only hope they have.