Slashdot Mirror
Ex-CBS Reporter Claims Government Agency Bugged Her Computer
RoccamOccam writes A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a "government-related entity" that planted classified documents on her computer. In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was "shocked" and "flabbergasted" at what the analysis revealed. "This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn't have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America," Attkisson quotes the source saying.
Just to validate the claims.
It says SPYware right there in the search results. Obviously made by spies.
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Look, this isn't what hacking looks like, unless it's being done by a 14yo who installed VNC on your machine and is just fucking with you. Why would a super seekrit Obummer conspiracy go to the effort to plant spyware on her computer and then use it by PRESSING BACKSPACE? While she was editing? That's beyond nutty.
Colonel Mustard: Why is J. Edgar Hoover on your phone?
Wadsworth: I don't know, he's on everybody else's, why shouldn't he be on mine?
A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light ...
There are News organizations that manipulate, encourage or suppress stories that may make a President look good or bad? When did this happen?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I don't doubt this kind of thing is happening. The government has been moving itself into ever darker shadows of secrecy to avoid oversight, while at the same time has been violating privacy rights of its citizens ever more egregiously. This is not a problem with any particular party or political viewpoint. This is just the nature of power. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The powerful elite will always consolidate and expand. In this country, the One Ring of Power is the law system, and the magic is provided by technology. I believe Ms. Attkisson.
Having said that, she is going to need much better proof than she has or nothing will come of this. There has to be a smoking gun in the had of an actual federal agent. In this case that would be an actual order to spy, provably given by someone who is high enough to be responsible for their decisions. She will never have that.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Yes.
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Not how someone with remote control over a computer would wipe data. Not deleting it in the fucking editor. A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.
She almost certainly held down control and backspace by accident and blamed it on the government. Classic paranoid ideation.
I can't wait to see the partisan reactions. Fox News and the Glenn Beck empire will crow about how this is worst presidential act in history, MSNBC will dismiss it as a looney conspiracy theory, and people will approach the story with their biases.
Actually. Better theory. She was on a laptop, didn't have the touchpad disabled, and accidentally highlighted some text while typing. Poof gone, and happens to all over us.
How do you know it was the US govt. bs some Romanian hackers.. or the Chinese? There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of evidence here.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
Hey, it happened in New Zealand and slightly more than a third of the people lapped it up happily. Of the remainder, but bulk didn't vote because they were sick of it.
So, in another New Zealand first, we re-elected someone who learned from Nixon, got caught, and didn't care.
Whether the motive is political or personal does not justify crime. This is suppression of information for the purpose of affecting an election. Nixon was stealing information for the purpose of affecting an election. The difference is minor.
Journalism based on political gain is propaganda, and all over in the news. It's hard to believe any one news source these days, they're all biased one direction or another. Get your news from as many sources as possible, get the facts, and make an educated assessment. It's the best way to remove the journalists' biases.
Sounds like someone needs to explain to her what the "Insert" key does.
And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed
I've done that to people before. Remote log in and start keyboard presses like delete as a prank. It may not have been to delete the data so much as to drive them crazy. If she was hacked by specific people to cause problems, that's a very logical tactic.
So the software is "commercial" but also "proprietary to a government agency" that cannot be identified.
I think that she does not understand the meaning of the words she is using.
But I also think that our government probably was spying on her. And lots of other people. Just not in the way she describes it.
Leave your baggage on the platform it will catch up with you after you are relocated to the east.
Yup. It's almost like there's a reason she's a former CBS reporter. But on the bright side, maybe she can get a job working for Alex Jones or Orly Taitz.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Aka Mr. Whats the frequency kevin ?
Aka Mr. I don't need the documents authenticated I know they are real.
Aka Mr. Why don't I turn my news network into a complete partisan embarrassment ?
Seeing as he was de facto running the news network there for quite a bit, it wouldn't surprise me at all if their culture had taken a turn into lala land.
As to being shocked at the spyware on her computer, i'd suggest "Number one" (seriously ?), I am hardly shocked at anything I see in the way of malware, especially if you let kids use a computer.
If it's done for personal gain, it's always a crime, but that is not always the case for other kinds of intents. A prime example: f a cop kills a man because he hated him it's a lot different than when a cop kills a man because he was kidnapping a little boy.
Even when a random person kill someone by accident, is a different and lesser crime than killing someone on purpose.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
.... selling a book! Also, I am not sure why she feels the need to say she had a phone next to her and that gave her a tilted look into data she was seeing deleted. I just saved a bunch of money by switching to Geico.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
What are you talking about? Nixon could only have wet dreams over what the US Government can and does do now.
The only two extenuating circumstances is that Obama certainly didn't build all this up on his own, nor was the first president to do so, but was in the building for many decades. The second being that the entire government is in on it.
Nixon is a great big boogie man to hold up, but his crimes pale against modern day government.
If the government was truly of the people, and concern with the 4th amendment - it would have decades ago ensured secure protocols and encryptions instead of backdoors into everything. But the concentrated shouts of law enforcement and the planners in power is typically louder than the diffused power of the majority. And instead of doing the right thing, it always choosing the lesser of 2 evils at that very moment (and there is always some "crisis), guess what? It still went bad.
The only point of your post is to act as an apologist. Sure, in the days of Nixon, when the government had its shoes covered in shit, and Nixon ankle deep in it appeared to be the worst guy out there. But now that the government is knee high in it, that point is long moot and gone.
And I say this all because we already experienced a guy who had the reach in his day somewhat comparable to today. Hoover. That guy had info on everyone and stayed in power so long because of it. I can't even guess at all the behind-the-scenes crimes he committed but since he wasn't a figurehead president and doesn't appear to have a party badge affixed to him, no one brings him up or attack him for shortterm gain.
Now the NSA is in the same position. And they have way more power to affect elections or politicians than Nixon ever had. Some Senator wants to defund the agency? Slip a brown envelope under her door full of her browsing history with a note saying "No $ Already?" and she'll get the message.
All it needs is the wrong director.
I just read a book about Watergate and it mostly makes you think Nixon was a rank amateur. Bungled, dirt-digging expeditions that were mostly designed to dig up embassing, low-rent scandals, conducted by second-tier political operatives outside of Nixon's actual control or direction.
It seems like just an evolution of the usual political chicanery employed up to this day.
The rest of the Nixon mystique just seems like hysteria. You can't tell me every administration since hasn't had a poitical enemies list or attempted to obfuscate their scandals and errors and suppress leaks. Nixon just happened to be caught in the tide of poltical and social upheavel of his time. It's winner's history.
Today's political skullduggery seems much scarier given the technology and powers the government has it didn't then, from the Patriot Act, National Security Letters to civil forfeiture.
" ... a sophisticated entity that used commercial, nonattributable spyware that’s proprietary to a government agency ..."
The government is selling that shit?
She's just doing Chicken Little to sell her book.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The first article of Impeachment against Nixon was for attempting (but failing) to use the IRS as a weapon against his powerful political enemies. Obama DID use the IRS as a political weapon, but not against the powerful who could fight back but the small and innocent, who only committed the sin of opposing a lightworker. Not plotted, not consipred, all sides admit Lois Lerner DID use the IRS against enemies of the administration, Lerner was a high Party offficial with frequent access to the White House.
What's scary is that what got Nixon on the brink of impeachment would today easily be squelched in a few days citing national security and the rest is swept aside with the reporters being labeled terrorists.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Honestly, I think that Nixon's stuff is worse. Spying on a journalist is bad - but not personal.
In addition, Nixon's crimes were both for his personal gain and hit democracy at it's heart - elections. Those make it incredibly evil crime.
The CBS reporter's incident, assuming it is entirely true, does not have these issues. There is no evidence that it was for any one's personal game, nor was it an attempt to circumnavigate political system.
As such, Nixon's crimes are far worse.
Yeah, right. Because Nixon politicized the IRS and set it against his enemies.
No, wait. He didn't. That was Obama.
Sorry, there's not much more fundamentally corrupt than politicizing the tax collector - that can and does take all your assets for no reason at all.
Is there anything Obama does that you wouldn't apologize for?
In the words of SNL's skewering of Obama's entire record of failure:
“Some people want to criticize the way our administration has handled this crisis, and it’s true we made a few mistakes early on. But I assure you, that was nowhere near as bad as how we handled the ISIS situation, our varied Secret Service mishaps, or the scandals of the IRS and the NSA,” he said. “And I don’t know if you guys remember, but the Obamacare website had some pretty serious problems too.”
He said that considering the rest of the second term, “this whole Ebola thing is probably one of my greatest accomplishments.”
Yeah, probably nothing to see here. If they wanted to wreck her work they'd just crash the machine and it would come back up with a corrupted file system. Nobody would think there was a conspiracy about a hard-drive crash.
Both of these crimes are malicious actions for political gain, not accidents or a cop defending an innocent. Neither are justified by motive or by result.
She's well known for her anti-vax "reporting," so she's got more than a smidge of a credibility deficit.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicin...
Yes.
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Not how someone with remote control over a computer would wipe data. Not deleting it in the fucking editor. A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.
She almost certainly held down control and backspace by accident and blamed it on the government. Classic paranoid ideation.
Later in the same article "It was described to me by the computer experts I consulted with afterwards that that was purely an attempt to let me know that they could do that, that they were watching, that they were in my computer."
You're right, nobody would break into a computer that way, unless, perhaps, if they were powerfully arrogant, and wanted to make a point.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yes. "And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Not how someone with remote control over a computer would wipe data. Not deleting it in the fucking editor. A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.
She almost certainly held down control and backspace by accident and blamed it on the government. Classic paranoid ideation.
The other option being: read the story.
Per her source, the deletion of data while she was using it was a warning. Warnings don't work that well when they're less obvious to the user. (I think Tom Clancy actually invented that move originally).
Knowing tech, ya, her story sounds like fiction. But then again a few years ago, so did dragnet surveillance, warrant-less/trial-less asset seizures, and drones executing US Citizens without trials With stuff like that, the known illegal spying, secret courts, secret laws, and fighting terrorism for the sake of the children, who could have predicted most of what is going on these days besides the likes of Grisham & Clancy?
"And as I was typing and working on questions for a Benghazi-related story, the data started wiping kind of at hyperspeed"
Sounds like a scene from the first episode of Torchwood. In fact, the whole story sounds like a failed pilot TV show.
My favorite quote from the story:
But the most shocking finding, she says, was the discovery of three classified documents that Number One told her were “buried deep in your operating system. In a place that, unless you’re a some kind of computer whiz specialist, you wouldn’t even know exists.
"They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,” Number One added.
Documents magically being deleted at hyperspeed, other documents planted "deep in the operating system"... yeah, right.
Yeah, probably nothing to see here. If they wanted to wreck her work they'd just crash the machine and it would come back up with a corrupted file system. Nobody would think there was a conspiracy about a hard-drive crash.
Especially since there's been so many high-profile hard drive crashes recently.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
...I can't imagine how bad it would have been if not. He's had a lot of bad press recently. When it comes to bad news, some Presidents are Teflon (Reagan), some Presidents are Velcro (Carter). Obama is more on the Velcro side than the Teflon side.
> Nixon could only have wet dreams over what the US Government can and does do now.
And probably does, in whatever hell he resides.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Even better, she was on a Lenovo Thinkpad, docking station, and lid closed. Known defect, the lid presses the delete key. It took us a while to track this one down where I work. Lots of deleted everything. Why, they even have a BIOS update for this. Apparently that was easier than fixing the manufacturing defect.
what got Nixon on the brink of impeachment
Note that articles of impeachment were drafted in the U.S. House of Representatives and a committee meeting held to draft the legislation needed to bring the issue in front of the entire U.S. House of Representatives. That was far more than simply being on the brink.... it most certainly would have happened. The only thing that kept Nixon from being impeached was his resignation that made such an effort moot.
Absolutely. Remember Back Orifice? A roommate's hosebeast of a girlfriend would come over and sit on the spare computer in the living room muttering under her breath and making random sounds while chatting on ICQ (Yeah, that long ago...). I installed BO on it and then would use my laptop to send deletes, backspaces and when I got really bored, send program closes to it until she would get fed up and leave to go smoke on the deck and complain to her bf about the "possessed" computer.
What is...
used commercial, nonattributable spyware thatâ(TM)s proprietary to a government agency
There are just so many things that are hokey about this story.
The spyware included programs that Attkisson says monitored her every keystroke and gave the snoops access to all her e-mails and the passwords to her financial accounts.
Happens all the time to people that open random emails and follow unknown linkys.
Attkisson says her source â" identified only as âoeNumber One"...
Good grief. In other news, let's talk about "chemtrails"!
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Or the delete key stuck down for one of numerous reasons. More than once I've had vi starts beeping like crazy because I've shifted the keyboard and the escape key has wedged under the monitor.
What's your proof besides pure speculation and guessing on your part? Ever have someone in control of your PC? I have, its dam spooky. And I knew who it was and why I allowed them control. So I don't have a clue what she actually seen but I sure as hell believe her pc was under someone's control and it wasn't her.
Jack of all trades,master of none
The reference I remember was in Doctor Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, when it's revealed that the Soviets have a doomsday weapon that'll destroy the world if a nuke goes off in their territory, and the Americans comment how a deterrent weapon is only good if it's known.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"Yup. It's almost like there's a reason she's a former CBS reporter"
Quote "A former CBS News reporter who quit the network." End Quote"
If you would have read it your wouldn't have egg on your face right now.
Jack of all trades,master of none
The incredibility of such actions are one of the reasons why they are done, so I wouldn't discount her story so easily. The Stasi did similar things (well, of course, not on laptops but in the same spirit). It's very sad and hard to believe for halway decent folks but some people are extremely evil.
i kan reed is a paid DNC shill that posts to /. He doesn't understand any of the actual tech stories and sounds like a complete idiot when he does post to them. However, a political story comes up between 8am and 5pm on Monday through Friday and he will post about 50 times to it citing DNC talking points to the letter. He has been called out numerous times and doesn't even deny it.
Because you know via your magic psychic powers that there's nothing interesting to report when the US left men behind to die when an embassy got overrun. It's not even possible someone in the chain of command made a newsworthy mistake, says your magic psychic powers?
This is why she quit - she was tired of being told they don't run stories that would reflect badly on the wrong people or causes, regardless of facts. This is also why "only old people" watch the broadcast news or read the newspaper for news - it's so blatantly biased these days, why bother?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The article continues:
"It was described to me by the computer experts I consulted with afterwards that that was purely an attempt to let me know that they could do that, that they were watching, that they were in my computer."
Not saying that interpretation is correct, but it does seem reasonable to point out that she does in fact have a response to your objection.
Sharyl Attkisson Fox News Her Next Stop?
The events have been well documented.
The events were not at all well represented by the press.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
You really think she's clinically insane?
Explanations more likely than insanity:
- she is non-technical and may be mistaken
- she's lying to sell books
- she's telling the truth
- she said something different and was misquoted or edited in some misleading way, possibly by accident
I believe TFA said the point of deleting in that fashion *was* to be obvious,
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
A quick console deltree "My Documents/Bengazi" while the computer is idle is easier and less obvious to the user.
From the article, quoting Ms. Attkisson:
She's not a computer expert and this part of the story I would want more proof before I buy it. I'd like to know who looked at her computer: what exactly this person's qualifications were and what exactly this person found.
She said that the malware found on her laptop was commonly used by the government... what was it exactly? Is there any malware in the world that is effective but isn't used by anyone except U.S. government agencies? From the article:
Slashdot collectively knows a lot about computers. Has anyone heard of spyware that matches the above description?
If I were a government spook and I was trying to crack a reporter's computer, I would use an off-the-shelf exploit, not something that pointed straight back at the government. I presume that computer spooks know where the black-hat marketplaces are, and thus where to buy new cracks as they go up for sale.
As for the classified documents, again I want more evidence. She should have gone to the FBI immediately with those documents if they really were classified. On the one hand that seems like a far-fetched thing, but on the other hand, the current Presidential administration is the first administration ever to prosecute journalists as spies.
P.S. Ms. Attkisson's first-hand stories about her bosses spiking stories, White House staff yelling at her for not being "reasonable", and all the rest of it are completely plausible to me (and fall within her area of expertise).
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
With stuff like that, the known illegal spying, secret courts, secret laws, and fighting terrorism for the sake of the children, who could have predicted most of what is going on these days besides the likes of Grisham & Clancy?
1) George Orwell
2) Aldous Huxley
do we really need to list the rest?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Uh-oh, I think they are onto us. I think we better come clean with some of the secret documents:
1. Steve_Ballmer.pdf - reveals that he starches his shorts
2. Zune - details the dastardly scheme to make Americans hate music
3. Word - shows insanity producing psychological warfare
I'm sure you all know some more. Tell her now before it is too late!! She's quite important.
Ah, so it sounds like there would be an interesting story there then, although it's a bit late for it to be "news" I guess. I'd sure like to read a non-sensationalized report on where the ball was actually dropped, given how embarrassing the outcome was for the US.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The control key stuck down on my keyboard a while back. There was a "d" in my password. Fucking gubmint kept shutting down my session every time I tried to enter credentials.
Nullius in verba
"commercial, nonattributable spyware that's proprietary to a government agency"
You can't parse that and have it make sense.
Commercial spyware that's somehow unable to be attributed to a person or organization? That defies the whole point of a commercial software product.
Commercial yet proprietary to a small group of government agencies? Again, that's not really the definition of commercial.
I can believe she had some sort of breach on her machine, most likely malware. Hell, I'd even be willing to believe there was some sort of spearphishing attack against her by someone who wanted data off a well-known reporter's computer but the rest of it just reads like a bad movie about the internet.
On a MacBook Pro, the first symptom of a failing battery is sometimes that the Q key stops working. Apparently it's right over the most common first place for the battery to start bulging.
> "deep in the operating system"... yeah, right.
DLLs in the system32 folder (why system32, am I one of 32 people being spied on?!?!) are seen as precisely that by the majority of people. So yeah, probably.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
| If I were a government spook and I was trying to crack a reporter's computer, I would use an off-the-shelf exploit, not something that pointed straight back at the government. I presume that computer spooks know where the black-hat marketplaces are, and thus where to buy new cracks as they go up for sale.
They weren't interested in exfiltrating information off her computer.
If you were a apparatchik and wanted to Send A Message, you'd use whatever you had conveniently available and was ready to use, and not something which could be dismissed as an accidental hack.
Why did Putin have that defector assassinated in London with polonium of all things? Why not an auto accident or a "robbery"? To make it absolutely clear who did it.
Note that this malware may be something 'off the shelf' for certain agencies (e.g. FBI/DHS). The government is large and heterogenous, with distinctly different motives and management. The people who really get into the nitty gritty of the black hat malware and know how to use it. (e.g. NSA) could be distinct from the ones who get "weaponized" malware ready to use in a package, "For Official Use Only".
Ever talk to a "Tea party group"? They would certainly describe themselves as rabid enemies of the administration.
Expect every email, phone call, fax, web 2.0 interaction, contact to be tracked by the mil and gov. :) ;)
They just want to know how the gov or mil is trending in real time and ensure no staff are talking to the press in their own time
So what can the press do?
If you have a contact meet in a deep underground car park. That stops most look down views tracking top staff as two car pull up next to each other.
Dont bring a phone, even removing a battery before a meeting can be tracked back in time with with all other people in the area.
Two phones are powered off in the same area around the same time, that could be the meeting.
Also expect any car of interest to have a beacon installed.
All digital communications and passwords can be found with keystroke logging over time. So consider a clean laptop for each story.
Then also enjoy the fact you are been tracked. Start looking back over 10 or 20 years of city, local and federal politics. Get creative with pages of fiction surrounding new contacts, list old and new real projects that have new details, banks, patents, new emerging crypto technology, new contacts with interesting real people with new "details".
Pages of 'real' interviews, 'new' contacts, emails that only get worked on in draft from random coffee shops. Set up a few working 24/7 camera systems.
All that is tracking most of press is a complex computer system looking for names, projects and distant hops to people in databases.
Mention the wrong project and the story is flagged. Is that the first mention seen? Does the press have a new informant with first fresh product?
An insider, direct knowledge been handed down, the first fruit from a productive new contact.
Then a human or team is tasked. Ensure they have a lot to read
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Not deleting it in the fucking editor.
If you're sniffing key strokes, then it's not that much additional effort to insert your own key strokes in. I'd also look at the "computer experts" and "sources" that she consulted as the potential originators of the problem.
She almost certainly held down control and backspace by accident and blamed it on the government.
Or a keyboard or software malfunction. It need not be an ID10T problem in order to be innocuous. I think this story would be far less frivolous if we actually were told what spyware was allegedly installed on the computer. Merely saying that experts looked at the computer and found stuff is not terribly relevant.
All in all, this is a boxing-at-shadows story. There's nothing material here to tell us whether something actually happened or not.
0) Yevgeny Zamyatin, whom both #1 and #2 ripped off.
One of the features of this mindset is that they assume that they are the only targets of bad government behavior. Spy on the left wing/Muslims/black people/Occupy Wall Street/anti-war/etc is great. By their lights, we are not doing enough of this, and it is always justified no matter what.
Of course the so called intelligence community is spying on everyone, but they don't care about that. That keeps us safe. Yet somehow they are the only persecuted group in the whole country. Paranoid much?
Why is Snark Required?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Even if was the government (or any of the associated companies, or a low-level new hire, or whatever) doing it, would be not the first time that the government uses the authority meant to fight terrorism with other purposes.
See Polonium poisoning as the least subtle current way of a government (Russian government obviously) deliberately doing something that points back to them as a fear tactic. This could be a more subtle way of "sending a message".
Looks like I should have read the message above before I used the Polonium analogy as well.
The only thing Nixon did differently than anyone else was that he got caught.
501(c)4 is different and you can engage in political stuff (apparently) as long as it's not the primary focus.
Moveon.org is an example of an existing 501(c)4.
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
First, it's the New York Post which is largely unsuitable for wrapping fish in let alone as a reliable source of "news". Second, she claims that all her work on Benghazi cover-up and Fast-N-Furious gun running scandals was being messed with. So her noble work in helping to promulgate right-wing nut job conspiracy theories was being thwarted. Next we'll be told that Obama himself wrote and installed the malware on her computer.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
It's really simple. There are commercial products (both hardware and software) that are offered for sale only to government agencies. You literally can't buy them if you don't work for some government entity, or if you don't have a direct and explicit authorization from a government entity. They are nonattributable to any particular government agency, but everyone in the know knows what company makes the product. The fact that you know the manufacturer doesn't make it attributable.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
The IRS deletes data at warp speed. As does the DOJ and the EPA. Why so you think this is so far fetched?
Pardon me if I'm misremembering. Was there actually any evidence ever presented that linked Nixon to the Watergate break in? I don't think so.
Show me the relevant statutes that say 501(c)3's are required to be nonpolitical.
She probably ran a malware scan and saw the debug output printing things like "CLSID=whatever", which she read as "classified". Paranoia will do fascinating things to your mind. Sigh...
This is the same unnameable spy agency that simultaneously ignored Fox News's daily Benghazi drumbeat, right?
Christ the "expert" could be her 12 year old son for all we know.
Now to be fair, you did "possess" it.
Life is not for the lazy.
Nope, it turns out that the whole "IRS Scandal" consisted of a conservative Republican IRS administrator who put in place a consistent rule for identifying groups that had political terms in their names and thus were inspected more closely for trying to illegally apply for tax-exempt status as a non-political social welfare group, as required by Congress. The list had many more non-conservative than conservative terms in it, and many more non-conservative than conservative groups were looked into because of the system. And it wasn't done by Obama or the White House, or even approved of by them. Using an explicit list instead of inspector judgement was an attempt to be more fair and consistent. It was politically stupid, because some politicians took the list and manipulated it, ignoring 70% of the terms on the list to try to spin it as an anti-conservative attack. If that was "using the IRS against enemies of the white house" it was also, twice as often, using the IRS against friends of the white house, so it wasn't much of a political weapon.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
The Chinese did it. Have we not ran a story about Chinese cyberwars. About the deleting, it is not the first time my keyboard gets stuck, and I have to close the lid. Am I bugged too?
On the MBP the battery is under the trackpad, so that's the first thing to go if the battery starts bulging (you might find that clicks don't register when you press down on the pad).
I can't speak for all of the models but I think the logic board is usually, if not always, near the hinge side and the battery is front-right with the HDD front-left. This would make sense since the vent for the CPU fan is in the hinge.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
> happens to all over us (sic)
Sure, and the spontaneous appearance of an extra fiber connection to the house, that happens to all of us too.
http://www.foxnews.com/politic...
It is not like that she could not write it ON PAPER. Often in a while I also had that happening to me on my Macbook Pro, keys getting stuck, and had to close the lid to fix it quickly, though with newer versions of OS/X, that has not happened for a long while. However I was not paranoid enough that was the gov after me.
I think the so called computer experts saw an opportunity to get some money out of someone gullible enough.
No doubt. Point being, like sci-fi authors getting kudos for predicting technology advances, political/law thriller authors should start getting the same for predicting what the government is doing today.
These authors did both parts, and more, as have quite a few others.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
-1) Jerome K. Jerome, whom we'll politely state Zamyatin was at least inspired by.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I don't think that it's a cut and dried as the article makes it out to be. My guess is that it still required human control to activate it, it just might not have required high-ranking military personnel or politburo officials to make the call.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.