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Tour de France Champion Accused of Hacking
ub3r n3u7r4l1st writes "A French judge has issued a national arrest warrant for US cyclist Floyd Landis in connection with a case of data hacking at a doping laboratory, a prosecutor's office said. French judge Thomas Cassuto is seeking to question Landis about computer hacking dating back to September 2006 at the Chatenay-Malabry lab, said Astrid Granoux, spokeswoman for Nanterre's prosecutor's office. The laboratory near Paris had uncovered abnormally elevated testosterone levels in Landis' samples collected in the run-up to his 2006 Tour de France victory, leading to the eventual loss of his medal."
FINALLY that phrase makes some kind of sense.
A hacker that doesn't weigh 250 lbs, doesn't live on Cheetohs, and actually exercises!
Landis grew up a Mennonite, sometimes refered to German Baptists, often mistaken as Amish. I'm not saying it's impossible for him to have learned the skills to do something like this, but I'm sure he has almost no access to a computer while growing up and his riding training probably kept him from honing his skills online.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
The warrant only applies to France. They are not seeking extradition. I do not know if Landis was actually guilty or not, but given the suspicious behavior of the lab and the French authorities during the initial doping case, it sounds to me like they simply want to prevent him from cycling in France ever again.
If the way he was riding last year in any indication, he would not be a contender for even a stage win in the TdF, but there is concern that he could take 20th overall, knocking the highest placing Frenchman to 21st.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Can't imagine how these clowns manage to function when they only keep one copy of all their results.
actually engaging in it.
Why is this modded troll? Wikipedia appears to agree:
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Because the behaviour of the lab and the french looked a lot more dodgy than Landis.
Do you have statistics on that?
Also, is hacking such a mystical activity for you that you want it to remain magically hard and uncomprehensable for yourself, that the tought of a cyclist (which you've stereotyped for yourself in some way) would rob you off all selfpriding and selfattributed intelligence if he would be able to pull something off you cannot, in your self constructed world where hackers are evil geniusses? (that reminds of those "hacking"-courses where these dull network admins are taught to nmap and with a broad smile proclaim they "wont use their hacking skills for evil" and are "now certified".)
I work with software day to day, but I'm not a "hacker", even thoughwhen I was a teen I used to "hack" stuff if I thought the payoff was great enough. Only it wasn't "hacking" to me, but achieving a goal; like circumventing security in place to go online, ISP blockages to fileshare, get porn, cracking registrations on software or just access data that seemed interesting enough for me to try to think a way to get it. While at the same time I was searching for the "mythical hacking", and never have found it. It just pays the bills now that I was looking deep enough to try to understand systems in the process and now work in that.
Simulary, I believe anyone thinking the payoff would be great enough (staying in running where you've trained very hard for) that's motivation right there to get online, google a bit and in the most easy case get a scriptkiddie to do it for you.
"hacking" isn't hard if you have a goal and you attribute enough meaning to it.
So if your "hacking cyclist" falls outof your scifi romantic lone nerd saving the world view, I'm sorry buddy. And no, I'm not a cyclist. I just don't like selfserving generalisations.
The official decision was to strip him of his title. I just don't understand why. Perhaps someone can clarify. He had daily tests. One day he is clean. The next day he crashed, had a surge of adrenaline and made up tons of ground after the crash. His testosterone was exceptionally high the day of the crash. It was normal again the next day. No drugs were found in his system.
So his crime was having exceptionally high testosterone for one day after a natural massive adrenaline surge.
I admit I'm biased in not trusting Tour de France officials after they repeatedly let in tons of known cheaters who have failed all kinds of doping tests (so long as they are European) and then go on crusades to try and discredit Lance Armstrong. So when they went after Floyd Landis with what appears to be very little proof, I tend to assume this is part of their crusade.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Oh come on, a hacking cyclist? Everyone knows professional cyclists are even dumber than professional soccer players. The French just can't stand loosing from Yanks, look at all the allegations they made against Lance Armstromg.
Oh, look, everybody, the troll is even dumber than a professional soccer player.
What's the matter with you? Did a French soccer player knock up your mom?
Is wikipedia also part of some conspiracy to discredit poor innocent Americans? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Landis#Doping_case "Under UCI rules, the determination of whether or not a cyclist violated any rules must be made by the cyclist's national federation, in this case USA Cycling, which transferred the case to the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA)." The evidence was good enough for the USADA but it's not good enough for the experts on slashdot?
Come on, noone is suggesting he did it himself
And I believe the actual point Landis is making is that he felt the drug testing companies were somehow in error, somehow-or--other hacked into their network, and unearthed evidence that supports his claim.
It's not surprising that a drug company would go on the offensive to try to cover up their mistakes. That's the entire point Landis is trying to make here. It doesn't look like he's necessarily even denying the doping charges. He's questioning the evidence gathering and handling process that led to the accusation.
Unfortunately, breaking a different law when attempting to gather counter-evidence usually gets your counter-evidence thrown out in court. BUT, sometimes when it's a "court of the public" and a PR issue, it can prove useful. And I believe that's where he's going with this.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Doesn't he suffer from Asperger's Syndrome? We need to keep him in the US so he doesn't harm himself if he gets extradited.
The title is inaccurate, as Landis is not a Tour de France champion. What an athlete is stripped of a title, it means you shouldn't be using that title to describe the athlete any more. Logical, no?
Uh.... I have two state time trial championships, and finished fourth in my class at the American Mountain Bike Championships. Top cyclists are pretty smart people, and you have to be to get your body in the kind of shape to perform at that level.
A friend who has won over 6 state championships says the strongest guys doesn't always with, but the smartest strong guy usually does. He fits that description to a T.
Place nail here >+
There were several issues with the case in general:
- There were several mistakes with tracking numbers of the so-called anonymous samples; these numbers should have all been consistent, but were not. In some cases, white-out was used to make corrections.
- There were irregularities in test procedures, including with calibration of the device used to test the testosterone level. The technicians appeared to not be competent in the operation of the device, and interpretation of results.
- One the original test results sheet provided to Landis and his defense team, there were actually 3 test results, and 2 of them were below the allowed threshold. Personnel from other UCI-approved labs have stated (in confidence) that those results would not have triggered a test failure in their lab. These personnel are not allowed to testify in the arbitration hearing, since they are barred from doing so by the UCI as a condition of becoming a UCI-approved lab.
- The test was not measuring testosterone levels, which vary by person and situation, but a ratio of one kind of testosterone to another. The actual testosterone level was not high, but the amount of the 'other testosterone', whose level is the denominator, was low.
- These were supposed to be anonymous tests, but the results were announced in haste by the UCI because the French press had gotten the results from the lab, and were about to go public with them. This should be a major strike against the lab.
- The arbitration hearings that result in a suspension do not appear to be at all like a normal legal proceeding, and they seem to be organized to rubber stamp (my opinion, of course) the results of the test lab. Landis' team introduced facts that helped their case, but it doesn't look like the 3-judge panel was all that interested in facts. Even so, the vote against him was 2-1, so one of the judges did not believe the test results either.
There is a good paper on the case, written by a retired criminalist (whatever that is), at this location: http://www.cacnews.org/news/4thq07.pdf
Some are saying that Landis' performance on the stage on which he tested positive was 'super-human', but he was riding with a PowerTap (which measures power output at the rear wheel hub), and it indicated that he was riding at power levels that he had ridden at in previous races that year (and for which he did not test positive for elevated testosterone). One unusual circumstance of the performance was that he rode ahead early in the race so that he was riding alone, allowing his team car to be near him most of the way, and to keep giving him cold water bottles, around 90 in all. 80 of these he used to douse himself, allowing him to stay cool (it was in the upper 90's in temp), while those in the pack did not have that luxury.
I guess I'm a little confused about the French laws and I'm hoping someone can help. They issued an arrest warrant because "Judge Thomas Cassuto ... is seeking to question Landis...." In the U.S. you don't issue an arrest warrant simply to question someone, do you? Maybe I'm just a little confused about the legal terminology, but I doubt I'm the only one. Some searches didn't really prove fruitful (they actually seem to support my view regarding the U.S.).
So, do the French actually file charges against Landis as part of the warrant or does it simply mean they plan to detain him for questioning and then let him go?
Yeah well considering how well Pereiro has been doing since that year, Pereiro and the rest might have been a pure joke allowing Landis to win and appear like a superman. Had Lance run that year, he might have looked like superman x10. Same for the other years until 09. The best talent is really young right now, no one is calling Schleck(s) or Wiggins dopers yet they embarrassed the previous years champions since Lance (or Landis considering he wasn't there but my bets are that he would have been no where near top 6).
I don't think this is entirely accurate. From what I can recall, the case against Landis was from two tests. The first showed that his T/E ratio was well outside the normal ratio for humans. Note that this is different from having elevated testosterone, in fact I believe his testosterone was actually lower than normal. It was just that his epiesterone was WAY lower than normal (these are normally about equal, his ratio was 12/1). As far as I remember this test was somewhat discredited due to shoddy procedures at the lab. The one that stuck was an isotope test which showed that the testosterone in his sample had a different isotope ratio than is found in humans. From this they concluded that it was synthetic and thus upheld the ban. I don't claim to entirely agree with all of their methods or even the results of the test, but I really don't think it's fair to say that he crashed, had a surge of adrenaline and subsequently tested positive.
It means that someone, I believe the hackers have already been found, obtain these files illegally. Landis used the files to attempt to prove his innocence (nothing wrong there). The problem is, what level of involvement did he have with the hackers in the first place. They want to show that he put them up to it or financed them or something. The lab in question and the French doping agency are embarrassed and would love to get payback. I always had a feeling that they might have fudge the results to get some massive publicity and glory.
ive listened to the french information about tihs repeatedly and it all sound like it's bogus, cheap tries to incriminate Landis.
- they are unable to explain what has been "hacked" (its obvious that every of the guys interviewed have absolutely no idea what hacking is, let alone use a computer properly..)
- they tell they are not at liberty to divulgate more info about it, but went to medias to pressure him
- one dude said he has shown documents in court, that were proving the labs results were WRONG about him, but that getting those documents could be done only via hacking, so that it must be him and that is why there is a warrant for him. this dude been silenced since, because it implies they WERE ACTUALLY WRONG AND HE DID NOT CHEAT
the most likely explanation, is that Landis got the documents from a friendly source inside the lab, did not disclose the source, and got framed into fake hacking accusations.
I have worked with the french govt enough to know this kind of shit happens often behind the curtains. Strangely, I left France.
So.. yes, it sounds terribly bogus to me. What a world we're living in...
Jockeys intentionally apply whips to the horse next to theirs, thus messing with the other jockey whip timing, and their horse will suffer or slow down due to this.
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