Hackers Forced Announcement of 10th Planet Find

JCY2K writes "According to The Inquirer, hackers gained access to the secure server where the data about the new planet was being held and threatened to reveal it. Evidently the discoverers have been withholding this information from the public since 2003 while they waited for full analysis."

Comments

Info was not withheld since 2003

[YoDave]

From a BBC article: The object was first observed on 21 October 2003, but the team did not see it move in the sky until looking at the same area 15 months later on 8 January 2005.

Re:Oh noes! Hackers!

[pyrrhonist]

Brown isn't quoted as saying anything about a hacker, and they didn't source that info.

It's on this page. But, yeah, it wasn't really hacking, it was just using Google well.

Like, maybe they didn't want to risk the media flaming them for prematurely announcing a tenth planet if they had to recant part of their data?

Also, the computers they use for analysis didn't see it because it moves so slowly. They found it on reanalysis a year and a half after they imaged it. They weren't actually sitting on the discovery for two years - just since January.

There was no hacker

[tricaric]

This claim has been extensively discussed in the Minor Planet Mailing List, in particular in this thread, where the "hacker" tells the whole story.

Re:A bad thing?

[d34thm0nk3y]

Some of the choice quotes from the timeframe. Make your own opinion...

President Bush:
We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America. We know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.

Oct. 14, 2002: "After September the 11th, we've entered into a new era and a new war. This is a man [Hussein] that we know has had connections with Al Qaeda. This is a man who, in my judgment, would like to use Al Qaeda as a forward army."

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
Sept. 26, 2002: "Yes, there is a linkage between Al Qaeda and Iraq."

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice
Sept. 25, 2002: There "have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of Al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time."

Dick Cheney
"If we're successful in Iraq then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11,"

Colin Powell
We know that there had been connections and there had been exchanges between al Qaeda and the Saddam Hussein regime. And those have been pursued and looked at

Also, signed statement to Congress

[michaelmalak]

Before Bush could go to war, Bush was obligated under the October, 2002 so-called war authorization by Congress to inform Congress that such action was "consistent" with "taking action against" the Sep. 11 terrorists. Leading up to the war, Bush was desperately pounding the CIA to come up with such evidence. They were unable to, so Bush simply issued a letter to Congress blandly asserting the completely unsupportable proposition anyway:

Text of a Letter from the President to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate

March 18, 2003

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,

GEORGE W. BUSH

This letter, and the need for it, is the most underreported aspect of the entire war, in my opinion, and an article on it is one of the most viewed on my blogs -- I was the first to break the story, simply by reading the text of the war authorization act on thomas.loc.gov. Too bad the mass media couldn't have done the same.