Small Favors

Whoever tweeted the picture of the junk reported to belong to Representative Anthony Weiner used the same Tweetdeck account as the embattled New York congressman:

Chet Wisniewski, a senior security adviser at security software company SophosLabs, said the TweetDeck stamp “does make it more plausible that it did come from him.”

Weiner used TweetDeck frequently, but he often also posted from the Web directly or from his BlackBerry. A widely circulated explanation for how Weiner’s Twitter account could have been hacked by email would also seem to be incompatible with the fact that the message in question originated on TweetDeck. If email had been used, the message probably would have originated via the photosharing site Yfrog, where the infamous picture was posted.

However, this information doesn’t rule out the possibility that the congressman’s Twitter account was infiltrated — as Weiner has publicly suggested. But experts say it adds another hurdle for an alibi that has come under increasing fire.

“The complexity goes up,” said Chris McCroskey, the Texas software developer who founded TweetCongress.org.

Picture at the link — but not that picture.