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Hacker Barnaby Jack Died of Drug Overdose
DrDevil writes "Barnaby Jack, the computer security expert who died mysteriously a few days before he was due to give a presentation on hacking pacemakers at last year's Black Hat, died of a drug overdose. The coroner initially withheld the report, which led to much speculation given the timing of his death. Mr. Jack appears to have taken a cocktail of drugs (PDF) and was found dead by his girlfriend. His girlfriend stated that he had used drugs regularly."
and this just proves it.
I think he hacked into the CIA and found some nasty shit. So, the CIA hired some goombas to take him out and discredit him - no one takes a drug addict seriously.
Slashdot is really letting itself go, when posts describing the mundane reality take precedence over a good conspiracy story.
Or could it be that the coroner was bought by the peacemaker manufacturing lobby to give that statement? Hmm...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
We have determined the other questions to be decoys.
These medications are bad for you, people die once in while, were going to sue and try to ban them. This seems to get just about everyone's approval. However these other medications that were made in a garage or jungle or other unsanitary conditions and routinely kill untold numbers of people but just happen to get people high. Let's legalize them!
If an alien species were to look and observe these types of things they would mark "do not contact" after determining the human race was crazy as hell.
From the Top Secret coroner's report on 007's death:
Witnesses report that the decedent ingested a cocktail of drugs just prior to death. When they tried to revive him, he was shaken, but not stirred.
here
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Should have gone MI5 style. He died of a drug overdose. The 45 calibre hole in his head was from the needle. The doors and windows were smashed inwards in a suspected altercation with his dealer.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If you do drugs, the CIA will definitely use an overdose to assassinate you.
I am unsure why Heroin is in the mix. He didnt seem to use Heroin. More weird stuff:
The report says there were abrasion on the cheeks, and contusions in the fingers. There was an "electrocardiographic monitoring electrode on the left chest".
Conspiracy theorist have a lot of ammo here.
It's OK - he was from New Zealand. Your constitution is safe.
Does Narcotics Anonymous pay you to post on Slashdot? This sounds like something straight out of The Book.
Yep.... I remember a while back, taking my kid to see the psychologist the school recommended, after a lot of prodding that she needed to see someone about her apparent ADHD. (While not a big fan of all the use of drugs for this, I relented because I'm divorced, with pretty much full custody of my kid. Today's combination of public schools and child services means they can quickly make things get ugly for you if you say no to their repeated suggestions.)
Anyway, the doctor looked over some of the notes the school made and some of her homework assignments, spent a few minutes interviewing her (and me), and pretty quickly wrote up a prescription for a particular ADHD medication. Having done a little research myself first (plus knowing other families with kids on these meds), I asked him why he was prescribing the one he did, vs. an alternative I felt might make more sense to try first. His answer? "Oh, there are a number of options out there, but I just like this one because it's the one I'm most familiar with." (A quick survey of his office revealed several promotional items around from guess which drug company? Yep....)
I mean, come on.... if you're in this field, shouldn't you be "familiar with" pretty much ALL of the drugs for something as common as ADHD?
It was heroin. Someone else could have injected it.
It was a drug cocktail.
Evidence of long-tern drug and alcohol abuse isn't likely to escape the notice of a competent pathologist.
The autopsy report has now been made available and says Mr Jack had shown "no visible or palpable evidence of trauma".
Instead, his physical symptoms indicated an accidental overdose of heroin, cocaine, and prescription drugs.
The report said Mr Jack's girlfriend had found him lying in bed unresponsive, with "multiple bottles of beer and champagne in the garbage can".
Elite Hacker Barnaby Jack 'overdosed on drugs'
It is not out of the realm of possibility that a motivated party found his vuln (recreational drugs) and hacked them (increase purity) to obtain a fatal result. Don't expect to see a presentation on it, though.
It is also not out of the realm of possibility that an alien probe caused a fatal heart dysrythmia. It's just not remotely probable.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If we can, let's put this death into the form of a something like a "Dead Schroedinger's Cat" and put it in a box for the time being.
You don't know for sure why this dead cat is dead, because you don't know enough about it, so you, being no sort of authority on the hidden and ever-changing features of the sub rosa, cannot make well-founded claims as to the causes behind this guy's death.
The "cat" is either dead from a legitimate overdose, or the "cat" is dead from being administered a bad cocktail by some agent of the empire. Unless you open the box, you don't know which it was.
The thing is, it's a dead fucking cat. And either way you look at it, drugs were involved. Does it matter if the guy was chasing his personal dragon and fucked up, or whether somebody showed up at his place and interrogated and killed him with his own drugs and some stuff found in the medicine cabinet? Allow me to carry the "penetration" analogy that some others in comments have mentioned, that in either case, the vector of "attack" is the drugs, the "attacker" being death.
Why would you want to fuck around with things like heroin or cocaine? I'm not a total drug-prude or something. I once spent an entire year, sans three days, high on some weed from Afghanistan. My cousin owns a successful pot shop in Colorado, and he's digging the new legalization just as much as I am. Of course, I can't smoke right now because it ruins my concentration and I'm going through college (a little late I might add) but that's all cool, smoke away, nobody ever died of a fucking pot overdose. I once did a couple doses of crystal MDMA, it was nice (nothing like what ravers describe Ecstacy to be), I felt super relaxed for the first time in my life since, like, adolescence, and it has had a nice, long-term residual effect, so that I don't think I will need to add to it for quite a number of years. But I would never contribute to my death with something known to be instantly lethal like cocaine or heroin. So many friends of mine have died using heroin, it's sort of a lost cause to tell me that there's A World Where heroin is okay to use. Cocaine is notoriously addictive and life-ruining, not to mention associated with heart disease (though some say it's a good agent against cholesterol levels). I tended to my Grandfather on his deathbed while I observed his decline accelerating due to his prescribed addiction to Xanax. So that's me, that's where I'm coming from.
I say it's stupid to do hard or addictive drugs. Look at what you're setting yourself up for: addiction and potential death. Where's the trade-off? "An altered state of mind"? There are plenty of safe hallucinogens to use. "Oh, I do it for the energy" that's bullshit, since I quite using caffeine and smoking cigarettes I have more energy than I ever did before. This is a documented side-effect of quitting systemically harmful drugs, especially stimulants. You don't have to worship L Ron Hubbard to know that some substances are plainly fucking stupid on their face.
And now look at the other possible quantum state of Dead Schroedinger's Cat, here. Suppose he DID get nipped by some secret agent spy-man. What was the cover-up? The guy's drug usage which some here believe is a made-up story but others have pointed out was a fact the guy himself made known. What would we be looking at if there wasn't this handy cover-up available, and a handy stash of drugs and well-stsocked medicine cabinet nearby to aid the implement of destruction? In all likelihood there would be a much more questionable medical examiner's report. So, again, the drug use serves up more "cons" than pros, this time directly to the people who are concerned with this guy's life -- fans, or whatever. You weren't getting high from this guy's drug use. There's no benefit to his drug use at all to you, but now that you're scratching your head wondering "WTF", there's definitely a major drawback to it, wouldn't you say?
So whether the dead cat inside is dead of its own cause, or somebody intervened to hasten d
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
I read the coroners report and the typical cause of death with this particular cocktail is "acute respiratory failure due to depression of the central nervous system". Cocaine is used to offset the nodding-off effect so the user can enjoy the opiate and benzo-induced euphoria without falling asleep ("why put frosting on the cake if you can't taste it" is a common sentiment among opiate users). This is common knowledge in the medical community.
CNS depressants all carry this danger, particularly when combined. The fluid found in Jack's lungs (the edema noted in the coroners report) is consistent with the noted cause of death, especially given that rigor mortis had already set in, indicating Mr. Jack had been dead for a few hours.
No conspiracy here, just another casualty of our society's tendency to self-medicate and lack of education regarding the effects of certain drug combinations.
Something else I found of interest in the report was the presence of levamisole. This nasty stuff has been used to cut cocaine for a number of years and should not be smoked/snorted/injected by anyone who prefers to keep their organs and body tissue in semi-decent working order.
And his "girlfriend says" he regularly used drugs.
So convenient, and full of hearsay, to explain it all away...
The truth is out there.
Drugs can be great fun if used wisely. Why would he not indulge?
Some drugs are often fatal (booze and nicotine especially), and others can be if one gets silly. Not everyone is Keith Richards so some folks croak. No big deal and not a surprise.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."