"Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied."
Anyone at PwC will instantly know if this is true or not. My guess is that the specifics will check out (why else include them?) and give credibility to the claim.
But even if those specifics are true, how will anyone know that they really have the returns? Maybe they just figured out where the returns were stored and are trying to force someone else's hand.
> Anyone at PwC will instantly know if this is true or not. My guess is that the specifics will check out (why else include them?) and give credibility to the claim.
These specifics are either public information or not. If they are public information, they can be checked by a member of the public and confirmed to be wrong or right; but if they are public information, they could have been obtained by such security breaches or by accessing the same public information used to check them. So if they are public information, they do not prove anything.
If they are private information, then perhaps only PwC/PwC-employees can verify; presumably some of them will. But, if there was no security breach then PwC will deny that there was a security breach, and if there was a security breach, PwC will - like most companies - deny that there was a security breach because there is no possible advantage for them to confirm it. So regardless of whether this private information is accurate, the only party in a position to verify the information is also in a position with powerful incentives to claim that it is false.
What is necessary is some sort of trap-door or one-way data: information which is private, but can still somehow be publicly checkable. None of these details seem to be such trap-doors.
I figure these details are either public (building plan listing the existence of suite 260; location of PWC offices and having 3 floors all are trivial bits of info) or are made up for the purpose of seeming plausible.
One strategy would be to have stolen a bunch of returns from a dozen (well-known?) individuals and then have them confirm that privileged information was taken.
Wouldn't entirely prove it to the public because it could be some kind of clever conspiracy, but taking it to a large enough size would make it fairly plausible.
That's the only way I can think of to get around relying on PWC or the Romney campaign for confirmation.
"Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied."
Anyone at PwC will instantly know if this is true or not. My guess is that the specifics will check out (why else include them?) and give credibility to the claim.
But even if those specifics are true, how will anyone know that they really have the returns? Maybe they just figured out where the returns were stored and are trying to force someone else's hand.