Via Lachlan Markay. Note well: Cyberattacks, not cyberpranks. Cyberattacks are malicious attempts to harm an individual or institution, whereas cyberpranks are whimsical little nothings that needn’t be acted on at all … even if they jeopardize one’s congressional career, mayoral ambitions, and marriage.

If only there was some way to know whether this was a true cyberattack or a mere cyberprank. If only there was some … investigative body that could look into it.

The New York Daily News reported the Congressman’s statement thusly:

Whoa, there, Mr. President: Let’s be careful with giving the NSA more power, Rep. Anthony Weiner warned today.

That’s in response to President Obama’s move to appoint a cyber-security czar (the plan is after the jump) who Weiner doesn’t want to give up too much civilian control while protecting the country’s information grid.

“Cyber attacks — both foreign and domestic — are real and demand immediate action,” Weiner said. “But we need a balanced approach. It is important that we don’t give too much authority to a government agency that collects information and rarely shares it.”

A reporter from the liberal, otherwise friendly TPM site caught up with him tonight and asked him point blank whether that’s him in the now-infamous photo. And once again he refused to flatly deny it:

“Look here’s the decision I made and you can disagree with it,” he told TPM when asked for a clear answer on whether it was him in the photo, “that after two and a half days of statements that answer these questions that I’m not going to keep drilling into further details and further details, even one … even the easy questions, even the obvious questions, even the ones I’ve answered before.”

Weiner went on: “Because I don’t believe in the idea you believe in that this will end. I have four separate emails from a New York Post reporter saying if you just answer this one question it will be over. You know people may not believe me, they believe Breitbart, whatever it is. I’m going to do the work I got to do and somewhere I’ve got to say I’m done talking about it. I’m going to decide what I’m going to talk about for the next several days and it’s not going to be this.”

There is a way to make it end, though, isn’t there? In fact, a question for the cops and prosecutors among us: Does Weiner actually have to file a complaint somewhere in order to jumpstart an investigation or can law enforcement take it upon themselves to do so? Bear in mind, his own office has alleged that a crime — hacking — has been committed. That should be good enough for probable cause. The cops wouldn’t need to read his Twitter or Facebook messages either; all they’d need to know from the companies is whether any unusual IPs accessed his accounts recently. If yes, it should be fairly easy to track down the hacker. If no, then there is no hacker. Like the man says: “immediate action.”

Via Mediaite, here’s Rush Limbaugh sounding more amused than anything.

Update: Looks like O’Reilly’s ready to dig into this too.