The man accused of secretly filming sportscaster Erin Andrews in eight videos later posted on the internet has been arrested at Chicago O’Hare airport.

Michael David Barrett, 48, was taken into custody and held on charges of interstate stalking. The FBI discovered that Barrett checked into the same hotel as Andrews in Nashville in September 2008, requesting a room adjacent to her and using his home address. The peephole on Andrews’ room was tampered with and a total of eight videos were recorded in two separate hotel rooms.

Barrett attempted to sell the eight videos to TMZ, whose employees assisted in the investigation. He faces up to five years in federal prison if convicted.

[CNN]

Sony has announced a new “integrated marketing campaign” which aims to reinforce Sony as a leader in quality by using a range of “celebrities” to promote Sony products in stores.

“Celebrities” will sit on panels in “retail environments” and will “assist consumers in choosing Sony products by differentiating the brand from its competitors.”

The list of Sony shills includes: Indianapolis Colts’ Peyton Manning, Justin Timberlake, everyone’s favorite ESPN reporter Erin Andrews, America’s Next Top Model judge Nigel Barker, Amy Sedaris, cinematographer Dion Beebe and…… Julia Allison.

According to Sony, Julia is a “columnist and Web celebrity” and all shills were chosen for their “high public profile, and because like Sony, they are leaders in their respective fields.”

Online celebrity whoring is a quantifiable field now? Talking about yourself non-stop puts you on the same level as Justin Timberlake? shit, I’m in the wrong game. I wonder how many consumers in “retail environments” will buy Sony products because Julia is there telling them to do so?

Audio of a 911 call ESPN’s Erin Andrews made when she spotted two members of the paparazzi outside her home has made its way online…via TMZ naturally.

Andrews, for those who missed the news, was secretly filmed naked in her hotel room recently with the footage making its way online. Many are claiming that the video was an inside job set up by one of her ESPN co-workers.

“I have been in the news recently about being in the hotel naked and I have paparazzi outside and I was told by law enforcement that if I did, to call 911,” Andrews told a 911 operator, before offering a description of the men. She then added “I did nothing wrong and I’m being treated like fucking Britney Spears and it sucks.”

The Erin Andrews 911 audio as follows:

Oh, snap!

Earlier this week, the venerable NYC-area paper of record the New York Post posted some stills of the internet sensation Erin Andrews peephole video and published them in print. Despite the sensitive handling of the story- (quote: ESPN HOTTIE ERIN ANDREWS IN PEEP SHOCKER, NUDE HOTEL VIDEO SPLASHED ONLINE) ESPN has banned the Post and any staffers from the network following the coverage. In a statement, senior VP of communications Chris LaPlaca explained the decision:

“While we understand the Post’s decision to cover this as a news story, their running photos obtained in such a fashion went well beyond the boundaries of common decency in the interest of sensationalism.”

So, did the Post respond with a well-worded reply? Nah- they decided to address the matter as all esteemed journalistic professionals might- on Page Six. In the gossip column, the Post contends that Andrews would have gone un-ID’d in the salacious video had ESPN not outed the sportscaster in a legal letter.

[Image: The Improper]

If the FBI wants to investigate the Erin Andrews peephole video scandal – in which crimes have obviously been committed – then some bloggers are doing some fine preparatory detective work in figuring out whodunit.

Primary among these bloggers is Don Chavez, who has taken time out of his regular “lad” blog schedule to post some heavy duty stuff about the originator of the Erin Andrews video material. There are several surprises in his revelations.

First of these is the fact that the person who uploaded the video to NSFWPOA.com, which is where the scandal got public prominence, may not have been the one who shot the video in the first place. The videos – plural – were originally uploaded to French video site DailyMotion by a 49-year-old user who goes by the nickname of Goblazers1.

The five minute video clip that has now propagated its way across other video hosting sites, plus BitTorrent and Rapidshare, is a compilation from seven separate videos which were uploaded by Goblazers1 as early as February 17 of 2009. Chavez and others have speculated on the identity of Goblazers1 by pointing out places in the US which have sporting teams called the Blazers, such as Portland’s Trailblazers and the University of Alabama-Birmingham Blazers, but there is no hard evidence on that front.

More importantly, Chavez, who friended Goblazers1 on Daily Motion, logged the IP addresses and dates of the uploaded videos, and has now matched them to locations in the US:

March 10: Montgomery, Alabama
March 12: Atlanta, Georgia
March 19: Dallas, Texas
March 21: Charlotte, North Carolina
March 26: Dallas, Texas
March 27: Dallas, Texas
April 21: Buffalo, New York state
May 6: Chicago, Illinois

View Erin Andrews Peephole Video Map in a larger map

Chavez also argues that because Goblazers1 also uploaded peephole videos of other unidentified women, the culprit is probably not an ESPN employee, something which has been speculated elsewhere.

The FBI is not currently on the case, but they’ve got enough to go on now. Perhaps Mr Chavez can expect a call from law enforcement some time soon.

The all-powerful ESPN sports media network is choosing not to report on some pretty big stories recently: the Erin Andrews peephole video and the Ben Roethlisberger sexual assault case. It’s not hard to figure out why.

In the case of Andrews, at least, ESPN is looking very much like it’s taking the high moral ground. Their star sideline reporter has had her privacy grossly invaded with not only illegally obtained video of her in a hotel room propagating its way across the Internet, but even mainstream publications like the New York Post publishing screen grabs on their front page. In contrast, ESPN’s stated decision to not report on the story, big as it has been across the Web, looks like a prudent and classy decision.

On the subject of Ben Roethlisberger, however, their reasoning seems a little suspect. Even the NFL has now talked about how they will look into the civil lawsuit filed by an employee of the Harrah’s casino chain alleging that not only did Roethlisberger sexually assault her in a hotel room, but that the Harrah’s management covered it up.

Could it be that ESPN is protecting its relationship with Roethlisberger, who recently filmed a segment on the upcoming reality television show Shaq Vs., with Shaquille O’Neal, on ESPN’s sister station ABC? Big Ben filmed the segment after the scandal broke but the network canceled a press conference to publicize it.

Remember back the other day when Paul posted about the peep show video of ESPN hottie Erin Andrews hitting the web?

Well it appears that the malware authors have discovered it as well and now are using it as the hottest target to infect machines around the world. This is accord to a post by Tom Kelchner from Sunbelt Software, the developers of security software, where he lets folks know about what their hunt for the video could end up getting them – and it’s not pretty either.

Today isn’t a good time to go looking for that Erin Andrews “peep hole” video.

There has been a boom in malicious spam, web sites and Twitter posts advertising a “peep hole” video of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews undressing in a hotel room.

Researchers at Sunbelt Software have detected that the Trojan installers used in the scam are generating a large number of polymorphic variants. The installers change with sites each day and number around 10,000 unique hashes.

VIPRE detects one as Trojan.NSIS.DnsChanger (v). Detections for a second, Trojan-Downloader.Win32.CodecPack.2GCash.Gen, will be pushed out shortly.

At one point on Tuesday, July 21, the number-one hit in a Google search for “Erin Andrews” was just two clicks away from a site with a downloader.

Needless to say, don’t get curious about the video. A rogue anti-malware product and a key logger are among the things that are downloaded.

Like Tom says you might want to think twice about looking for the video unless of course you like having your machine infected – then by all means hunt away but consider yourself warned.

picture courtesy of Sunbelt Software

If ESPN reporter Erin Andrews had hoped that the worst exposure that the nude peephole video of her taken in a hotel room that was originally uploaded to NSFWpoa.com would have would finish when the only place you could find it was Google’s web caches, she will be disappointed to hear that the video file has now been uploaded to the BitTorrent file sharing network, the RapidShare and is embedded on a page on TheVideoBay Web site.

The Inquisitr will not link to the video in its various locations for obvious legal reasons. The torrented version of the file is advertised on PirateBay with the press release put out by Andrews’ lawyer on PRNewswire.

LOS ANGELES, July 17 /PRNewswire/ — With respect to recent Internet postings of Erin Andrews, she has authorized her attorney, Marshall B. Grossman of Bingham McCutchen LLP, to issue the following statement:

“While alone in the privacy of her hotel room, Erin Andrews was surreptitiously videotaped without her knowledge or consent. She was the victim of a crime and is taking action to protect herself and help ensure that others are not similarly violated in the future. Although the perpetrator or perpetrators of this criminal act have not yet been identified, when they are identified she intends to bring both civil and criminal charges against them and against anyone who has published the material. We request respect of Erin’s privacy at this time, while she and her representatives are working with the authorities.”

It seems there will be no stopping the propagation of this video now, despite the threat of legal action by Andrews. ThePirateBay, on which the torrent file is linked, was acquired recently, in part due to legal issues.

Erin Andrews, popular reporter and blogger for ESPN is back in the news this week after the owner of a site uploaded video of her taken through a peephole while she was nude.

The Erin Andrews Peephole Video was uploaded to the site, NSFWpoa.com, yesterday with the description written as “Hot naked blonde who looks a lot like a sports blogger favorite in her hotel room.” Attorneys for ESPN immediately sent the owners of the site a threatening notice warning them to remove the video and they complied.

It’s not yet known whether anyone saved and re-uploaded the video clip, but chances are it’ll turn up soon, if it hasn’t already. Some surfers are claiming that the Erin Andrews Peephole Video can still be accessed in Google cache, and there also hundreds of clips showing up on Youtube claiming to be the real video, but are nothing more than people trying to get view and subscriptions to their own videos.

Erin Andrews was in the news just last week after she attended a baseball game where she was hit on the chin with a foul ball.

Hot ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews was hit by a foul ball during the Mets/Dodgers game Wednesday night.

According to a statement released by ESPN, Andrews suffered a bruised chin and was taken to hospital as a precaution. “She’s totally fine. The producers on site suggested she go to the hospital as a precaution” the statement said. “Doctors released her soon thereafter. She flew home as scheduled and is looking forward to working MLB All-Star events and the ESPYs in the coming week.”

Oddly there is no video of Erin Andrews being hit by the foul ball available, and a number of uploads on YouTube claiming to show the moment have been pulled allegedly due to copyright claims. I say allegedly because not only would the clip would be fair use, the clip hasn’t resurfaced anywhere at all (we’ve looked) suggesting that the video simply may not exist. Besides, imagine how much traffic ESPN would get if they offered the clip as an embed.