One of our readers, Jennifer P. sent us the following e-mail.
“If your blog is interested in truth in politics, there is a great story in Greenville County politics that someone needs to get to the bottom of. The local news media (Greenville News and the television stations) are all just repeating what they are told and don’t really do any investigative reporting. Check out the story about County Councilman Tony Trout and the recent FBI search warrant of his computer equipment. Apparently, Mr. Trout sent spyware via e-mail to the county administrator’s computer and to other council members. Trout says they are retaliating against him because he has exposed their graft and corruption regarding illegal road paving contracts.”
We have the federal affidavit available here as a PDF.
Councilman Trout contends that he was within his rights to install the virtually untraceable spyware on county administrator Joe Kernell’s computer because the administrator is his employee. However that position was contradicted by Greenville County’s attorney Mark Tollison who said that Mr. Trout was incorrect and that the administrator works for the entire council — not a single member — and that court precedent also rules against Mr. Trout.
Federal investigators today obtained a search warrant for the software manufacturer’s offices in Orlando, FL. Full details of the warrant are not known, but we have been able to confirm that it does mention the manufacturer CyberSpy Software, LLC and the software product RemoteSpy. As of this afternoon, CyberSpy Software executives said they had not yet received the warrant.
Last night, on the motion of council member Dr. Bob Taylor (father of Representative-Elect Wendy Nanney) Greenville County Council authorized an ad hoc committee to monitor the investigation while the council is recessed until August. The committee, which has the authority to contract with outside attorneys on the county’s behalf, consists of Chairman Butch Kirven, Vice Chairman Judy Gilstrap, Dr. Bob Taylor, Cort Flint, Fred Payne, and Joe Dill.
David Smith, the former grand jury foreman who, according to a winter 2007 State Law Enforcement Division affidavit had 190 phone calls with Mr. Trout, voluntarily turned his computer over to federal authorities before a warrant was issued.
Both Smith and Trout were forced to turn their computer equipment over to authorities in December 2007 concerning a SLED investigation “to determine if this communication violates Section 16-9-350; Attempting to influence Juror by written or oral communication; and/or the common law offense of Contempt of Court.”
We’ll publish more when we have additional information.
That’s the truth.
TRUTH UPDATE: This is not a advertising based site. Remaining free from pressure by advertisers is one of the ways we ensure fairness in reporting. With that said we received an e-mail from Tracer Spence, CEO of CyberSpy Software, LLC (makers of RemoteSpy) on June 19. His request was simple.
“Where applicable we would appreciate a link to our website when either our quotes are used or copyright/trade marks are listed. Our official websites are: http://www.cyberspysoftware.com and http://www.remotespy.com.”
We’re not a promotional organization, but to remain fair to a company that has been mentioned in connection with this investigation, we honored his request. We will also include this link to TonyTrout.com in advance of his request so as to provide equal access to each side of this ongoing investigation.
August 2, 2008 at 8:51 pm
It’s amazing
November 19, 2008 at 4:54 pm
It would seem that cyberspy has been shutdown by the FTC recently.