Wow, speaking of using pictures for identification, have you read the story about Todd Shriber, communications director for U.S. Representative Denny Rehberg (R-MT)?

I hate to give away the punchline, but you have to read this to believe it:

The ‘hackers’ ask for pictures of the campus with squirrels and pigeons to make sure he’s ‘legit’. He says he doesn’t live near campus anymore. Remember, he lives in DC, not Texas. So they tell him any picture of a pigeon or squirrel will do.

I mean what more proof of your legitimacy (of anything) do you need other than a picture of a pigeon or squirrel? They are so unique; practically a secret.

The email thread is simply amazing. I love the part where Shriber asks if it has to be a pigeon:

I honestly cannot rember if there were pigeons on campus or not. A lot of crazy squirrels, but I can’t remember pigeons.

I hope to see dramatic interpretations of this whole thing in online video format any day now:

…let’s be clear. You are soliciting me to break the law and hack into a computer across state lines. That is a federal offense and multiple felonies. Obviously I can’t trust anyone and everyone that mails such a request, you might be an FBI agent, right?

So, I need three things to make this happen:

1. A picture of a squirrel or pigeon on your campus. One close-up, one with background that shows buildings, a sign, or something to indicate you are standing on the campus.

ROFL!

Please note that I’ve added an image of a squirrel to this post to help provide legitimacy. Yes, that’s a genuine image of a squirrel. I might even go so far as to call it a seal of legitimacy, but squirrels really aren’t related to seals.

EDITED TO ADD (27 Dec 2006): Bruce has picked up the story on his blog, although for some odd reason he describes it as “the problem with ‘hiring hackers'”.

Strange, but apparently a true story:

As a drug officer, [Barry] Cooper said, he made more than 800 drug arrests and seized more than 50 vehicles and $500,000 in cash and assets.

“He was even better than he says he was,” said Tom Finley, Cooper’s former boss on a West Texas drug task force and now a private investigator in Midland. “He was probably the best narcotics officer in the state and maybe the country during his time with the task force.”

But now that he has retired from being paid to find drugs, he has taken up a different cause:

Cooper, who said he favors the legalization of marijuana, made the video in part because he believes the nation’s fight against drugs is a waste of resources. Busting marijuana users fills up prisons with nonviolent offenders, he said.

“My main motivation in all of this is to teach Americans their civil liberties and what drives me in this is injustice and unfairness in our system,” Cooper told the newspaper.

Of course he has critics:

[Richard Sanders, an agent with the Tyler Drug Enforcement Agency, said] “…for him to go to the dark side and do this is infuriating.”

Smith County Deputy Constable Mark Waters, a narcotics officer, said the video is insulting to law enforcement officials.

“This is a slap in the face to all that we do to uphold the laws and keep the public safe,” he said.

Hmmm, but what if you have an informed, perhaps even expert, opinion of what constitutes “safe” with regard to narcotics, as Cooper apparently does? I would have found it more encouraging if his critics had responded to his point about putting nonviolent offenders in jail, rather than trying to demonize him (“the dark side”) and sensationalize his actions (“slap in the face”). After all, you might say while he was the best officer for finding drugs, he disagreed with how offenders were treated or handled. Perhaps he even discovered that the post-discovery enforcement was doing more harm than good? If he is such an expert in narcotics work and he says his work was actually making neighborhoods less safe rather than more (diminishing civil liberties) how does that constitute the dark side? I mean it is not like he is trying to say it is ok to conceal alcohol abuse or a history of shirking public service and accountability for disasters while serving in public office. Now those issues seem more like a slap in the face, and you don’t see Texas law enforcement crying out much about them…