Come on, he installed four alarm system and didn't bother with a single surveillance camera? I am not saying that there wasn't somebody in his apartment, but it's hard not to think this might have just been a case of a malfunctioning alarm system and a whole bunch of paranoia on top. If the government is after you, at least make sure you get some pretty pictures of them, cams are cheap these days.
That triggered alarm bells in my head as well. Maybe those "alarms" that were disabled were really cameras sending pictures to someplace, these are cheap and getting cheaper these days. If he was using something from a commercial service (like Dropcam) those accounts would have been disabled before the break in crew arrived at his door step. If they were watching his internet stream they would have known about such things.
Still, a guy that worried would have a cam somewhere.
Flat, in Germany refers to an apartment, not a condo.
However, there is nothing (other than his rental agreement) that would prevent him from having his locks changed out, even if he did it himself. Its trivial, and your building super might not notice for years, if you are always there to let him in.
Him having the only key means nothing if he bought a common lock, many of which are still being made to this day that are susceptible to bump keys.
The problem with cameras is that they are also on while you're at home alone. Once the government catches you on video making a sandwich or writing an email they can use it against you. Better to claim you just sit and watch a blank TV all day.
Oh come on. People who have cameras know they have cameras, and turn them off when they don't want them on. Especially (justifiably) paranoid people. If you don't get notified that your camera took a picture and maybe have it emailed to you, you're doing it wrong.
He doesn't have to SEND anything. As clearly stated in my post and published in many sources, he had distributed encrypted copies to many different locations.
The means by which he releases encryption keys is unknown. But what is known is that not ALL the information has been decrypted by the holders.
He doesn't need help with a messed up head...who wants to bet this is some stunt? What proof we have besides the word of a wacko?
Seriously, people, why is this modded down into oblivion? Is it not at least plausible, and worth discussing?
No proof, no details, no explanations on how he "knows" these things? No Pictures? Four alarms, carefully positioned objects, and not one camera? Sure he might not want to give away his trade-craft, but then why give away his knowledge that it happened?
We all want to blame the three letter agencies these days, but we should at least entertain the thought that this might be cheap self aggrandizement.
So someone managed to turn off three alarm systems, but didn't think to make sure that the contents of the apartment were all left in the same position that they found them?
Going to point out since they missed the 4th alarm system, it's not surprising that didn't put everything back in the same place.
After three went off loudly, they might have been forced to turn these off, and they totally missed the silent one. If all his alarms were the noisy kind, they might stop worrying when it got quiet.
What I want to know, is why he doesn't have pictures. Four alarms and memorized placement, and no hidden wireless cameras?
But turning the computers on is just plain gross incompetence.
Turn the computer off/reboot into a forensic linux cd/dvd, examine the hard drive, do what you want, switch some system files for files more under your control, then hope he doesn't notice you've done these things.... then follow his computer activity/trail, his tor activities....
No "security researcher and hacker" would have his computer set up to boot from the CDrom, or have his bios un-password protected, or his hard drive unencrypted. If they were "Really Good" at computer forensics they might have simply removed the drives cabled them up and cloned them, encrypted partitions and all. (It would be impossible to add their own versions of software to an encrypted drive. Of course this assumes he's not running Windows).
If done right, and everything put back in place, the only thing he would have to determine that the "computers" were turned on would be the power on count in the drive's SMART data.
Of course, he could have gone old-school, and placed a tuft of cotton fuzz in the fan vent. Someone who uses 4 alarms might just be that careful.
almost surely *not* gummint employees, which is -to a large extent- the problem... no, these are prob *EX* gummint spooks who are now private contractors doing the dirty work of unka sam...
can you say : plausible deniability, sure, i knew you could...
So you thing the NSA doesn't have it best teams on this issue, and instead are going with a Michael Westin solution? That's crazy. Why would they need plausible deniability? Who's going to arrest them? Certainly not the BfV or BND.
Snowden has made it clear he gave all documents to others,
He has made it clear he has given encrypted copies to others, and he releases encryption keys selectively as the need arises. Which suggests he as a very good memory, or access to something to retrieve the next key or the key specific to the topic he chooses.
He hasn't made the whole trove accessible to all of the holders yet.
So someone managed to turn off three alarm systems, but didn't think to make sure that the contents of the apartment were all left in the same position that they found them?
They might have had no alternative but to turn off the three alarms. After all a loud ringing alarm will soon bring investigators of one sort or another.
Who knows just how persnickety his staged positioning of items in the room might have been. That magazine might overlap that envelope on the table "just so", and he could have had photos on his smartphone that he could match better than even a professional team could restore.
Burglars were an invention of the Summary Writer, Timothy, who is famous for this type of stuff. The link to the story makes no mention of burglars and does not suggest any physical object was stolen.
Who knows how much data may have been siphoned off. That might constitute Burglary, but he was not deprived of anything but piece of mind.
He doesn't seem to be able to tell tell what they took, or what they did on his computers. Seems odd a security researcher can't determine this, (or maybe he just doesn't want to tip his hand).
In any event, I would't trust those computers again, even to read email.
Nothing is going through their mind. Most of them haven't a clue about what is going on around them, they are probably yakking, and singing along to the radio, etc.
They recognize two situations, too far, and too close and that's about all. Their speed doesn’t even enter into their mind.
And the same can be said about DropBox. They promised end-to-end encryption, but instead they were "de-duping" files to save storage, which means that entirely contrary to what they told their customers, they actually had direct access to your raw files. Sure, they fixed that (so they say), and said "Sorry, we won't do it again." But how much can you trust them, considering that they blatantly lied to you before?
Deduping should never actually work if the files were store with unique encryption keys. On personal stuff, multiple files that are bit-for-bit identical (such as THIS GUY's Experiment you can see where it might be possible, but perfectly innocent. After all he sent the exact same file with just a different name.
But de-duping encrypted files seems unlikely to have much of a payout.
You might be surprised. Its usually bundled in with a lot of other more expensive options. Kids thing they don't need it because they are never going to cruise as the jack rabbit from one stoplight to the next/
Cruise control is all too often a safety hazard on the interstate. Safety requires space, the more the better, between vehicles. All to often cruise control is the reason cars remain in close proximity, mile after mile.
Oddly enough, there are virtually no traffic statistics that back up your claim. There is some speculation that cruse control would lull drivers to sleep, but in fact this happens no more with CC than withoug. As for slow passing, that's mostly a fallacy, because every cruise control allows driver over-ride, and passing a slower vehicle at one mph difference in speed is not some how more dangerous than passing at 5 or 10 mph. The same driver that will allow the CC to take them slowly around another car would pass slowly if managing their speed manually.
Constant adjustment is part of the problem. People yoyo-ing up and down the highway are the real risk inducers.
Its not the cars who drive that way, its the Drivers. (And to an extent, under powered trucks who decide to occupy all lanes passing each other in precisely those locations where they obstruct everyone).
Basic Cruise Control from the 60s and 70's could handle that situation. The problem is there are too many people who won't use cruise control, and too many entry level vehicles that don't have cruise control (it cost a couple hundred bucks for after market kits, and less if you buy it included in a new car).
Modern Adaptive Cruise control will keep pace with a preceding vehicle (up to you set speed), and detect potential rear-end collisions long before the driver might. Usually that costs much more because you need optics or radar (25ghz) to detect distance of the car in front. But it saves gas, collisions, and aggravation. (I'll never own another car without adaptive cruise control).
Or it's the "normal" and "expected" response, but for arbitrary value numbers different than you think they should be.
Certainly in the eyes of the less fortunate, petty theft may not seem so petty. And grand theft might be something they never have to worry about, having nothing that counts as "grand".
Still, the law sets the value of various levels of theft. In Alaska, a stolen burger is Theft in the Fourth Degree and unlikely to receive any official police action, even if they did show up to keep the situation from getting out of hand. Your missing car engine case (contrived as it might be) is Theft in the Second Degree and most certainly would get attention.
Point is, the law makes distinctions, and so should adults.
Having a 911 button on a cell phone (bringing it back on topic) servers only to make people into children again, tattling to mom over trifles, instead of dealing with it as adults.
Refactoring should be done on a "need to basis". Need to implement a specific feature, but it's not possible within the programs architecture? Make the required changes and get on with life.
But starting a "Let's refactor just because" is a folly.
Its hard to know what forced this refactoring. Was it forced upon him by the totally mishandled move from KDE3 to KDE4, or was it something internal that he did, without realizing the amount of work involved?
Is he better off sitting back for a while while KDE again refactors its framework for KDE 5? Is that going to be yet another huge debacle, setting KDE back 4 years like the last re-factor?
At this point in time, KDE 4.12.0 is probably the best KDE in a long time. But 4.12 is probably the last bug-fix that the 4 branch will get, as all the developers have move on to 5.
Because for 60A they use different types. The gauges used at 20A and lower are more prone to failure. So getting a 60A wire and running 20A over it would be safer than getting an appropriately sized wire. Copper doesn't have that problem, and you always use the smallest wire for the job.
The problem with aluminum wiring was not that it couldn't handle the load. While a continuous run of aluminum wire does not present a problem, when that wire is connected to outlets and light switches the connection can deteriorate and become a fire hazard.
The problem was that it "flows" under the pressure of the connecting screws AND it oxidizes when exposed to air. Its a double whammy waiting to happen in every outlet or junction box.
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Come on, he installed four alarm system and didn't bother with a single surveillance camera? I am not saying that there wasn't somebody in his apartment, but it's hard not to think this might have just been a case of a malfunctioning alarm system and a whole bunch of paranoia on top. If the government is after you, at least make sure you get some pretty pictures of them, cams are cheap these days.
That triggered alarm bells in my head as well. Maybe those "alarms" that were disabled were really cameras sending pictures to someplace, these are cheap and getting cheaper these days. If he was using something from a commercial service (like Dropcam) those accounts would have been disabled before the break in crew arrived at his door step. If they were watching his internet stream they would have known about such things.
Still, a guy that worried would have a cam somewhere.
So many imaginary solutions, so easily reeled off.
Let see you do that in real life, with out disturbing the dust near the computer.
Go out side and play kid.
He has pictures.
https://twitter.com/ioerror/status/394042003928776704
Nothing in that thread says he actually has photos. He merely implies it, and suddenly worries about the ethics.
Flat, in Germany refers to an apartment, not a condo.
However, there is nothing (other than his rental agreement) that would prevent him from having his locks changed out, even if he did it himself. Its trivial, and your building super might not notice for years, if you are always there to let him in.
Him having the only key means nothing if he bought a common lock, many of which are still being made to this day that are susceptible to bump keys.
The problem with cameras is that they are also on while you're at home alone. Once the government catches you on video making a sandwich or writing an email they can use it against you. Better to claim you just sit and watch a blank TV all day.
Oh come on. People who have cameras know they have cameras, and turn them off when they don't want them on. Especially (justifiably) paranoid people.
If you don't get notified that your camera took a picture and maybe have it emailed to you, you're doing it wrong.
He doesn't have to SEND anything. As clearly stated in my post and published in many sources, he had distributed encrypted copies to many different locations.
The means by which he releases encryption keys is unknown. But what is known is that not ALL the information has been decrypted by the holders.
He doesn't need help with a messed up head...who wants to bet this is some stunt? What proof we have besides the word of a wacko?
Seriously, people, why is this modded down into oblivion?
Is it not at least plausible, and worth discussing?
No proof, no details, no explanations on how he "knows" these things? No Pictures? Four alarms, carefully positioned objects, and not one camera?
Sure he might not want to give away his trade-craft, but then why give away his knowledge that it happened?
We all want to blame the three letter agencies these days, but we should at least entertain the thought that this might be cheap self aggrandizement.
So someone managed to turn off three alarm systems, but didn't think to make sure that the contents of the apartment were all left in the same position that they found them?
Going to point out since they missed the 4th alarm system, it's not surprising that didn't put everything back in the same place.
After three went off loudly, they might have been forced to turn these off, and they totally missed the silent one. If all his alarms were the noisy kind, they might stop worrying when it got quiet.
What I want to know, is why he doesn't have pictures. Four alarms and memorized placement, and no hidden wireless cameras?
But turning the computers on is just plain gross incompetence.
Turn the computer off/reboot into a forensic linux cd/dvd, examine the hard drive, do what you want, switch some system files for files more under your control, then hope he doesn't notice you've done these things.... then follow his computer activity/trail, his tor activities....
No "security researcher and hacker" would have his computer set up to boot from the CDrom, or have his bios un-password protected, or his hard drive unencrypted. If they were "Really Good" at computer forensics they might have simply removed the drives cabled them up and cloned them, encrypted partitions and all. (It would be impossible to add their own versions of software to an encrypted drive. Of course this assumes he's not running Windows).
If done right, and everything put back in place, the only thing he would have to determine that the "computers" were turned on would be the power on count in the drive's SMART data.
Of course, he could have gone old-school, and placed a tuft of cotton fuzz in the fan vent. Someone who uses 4 alarms might just be that careful.
almost surely *not* gummint employees, which is -to a large extent- the problem...
no, these are prob *EX* gummint spooks who are now private contractors doing the dirty work of unka sam...
can you say : plausible deniability, sure, i knew you could...
So you thing the NSA doesn't have it best teams on this issue, and instead are going with a Michael Westin solution?
That's crazy.
Why would they need plausible deniability? Who's going to arrest them? Certainly not the BfV or BND.
Snowden has made it clear he gave all documents to others,
He has made it clear he has given encrypted copies to others, and he releases encryption keys selectively as the need arises.
Which suggests he as a very good memory, or access to something to retrieve the next key or the key specific to the topic he chooses.
He hasn't made the whole trove accessible to all of the holders yet.
So someone managed to turn off three alarm systems, but didn't think to make sure that the contents of the apartment were all left in the same position that they found them?
They might have had no alternative but to turn off the three alarms. After all a loud ringing alarm will soon bring investigators of one sort or another.
Who knows just how persnickety his staged positioning of items in the room might have been. That magazine might overlap that envelope on the table "just so", and he could have had photos on his smartphone that he could match better than even a professional team could restore.
Burglars were an invention of the Summary Writer, Timothy, who is famous for this type of stuff. The link to the story makes no mention of burglars and does not suggest any physical object was stolen.
Who knows how much data may have been siphoned off. That might constitute Burglary, but he was not deprived of anything but piece of mind.
He doesn't seem to be able to tell tell what they took, or what they did on his computers. Seems odd a security researcher
can't determine this, (or maybe he just doesn't want to tip his hand).
In any event, I would't trust those computers again, even to read email.
Traffic accident statistics do not support your ridiculous claims.
Nothing is going through their mind. Most of them haven't a clue about what is going on around them, they are probably yakking, and singing along to the radio, etc.
They recognize two situations, too far, and too close and that's about all. Their speed doesn’t even enter into their mind.
And the same can be said about DropBox. They promised end-to-end encryption, but instead they were "de-duping" files to save storage, which means that entirely contrary to what they told their customers, they actually had direct access to your raw files. Sure, they fixed that (so they say), and said "Sorry, we won't do it again." But how much can you trust them, considering that they blatantly lied to you before?
Deduping should never actually work if the files were store with unique encryption keys. On personal stuff, multiple files that are bit-for-bit identical (such as THIS GUY's Experiment you can see where it might be possible, but perfectly innocent. After all he sent the exact same file with just a different name.
But de-duping encrypted files seems unlikely to have much of a payout.
You might be surprised. Its usually bundled in with a lot of other more expensive options. Kids thing they don't need it because they are never going to cruise as the jack rabbit from one stoplight to the next/
Cruise control is all too often a safety hazard on the interstate. Safety requires space, the more the better, between vehicles. All to often cruise control is the reason cars remain in close proximity, mile after mile.
Oddly enough, there are virtually no traffic statistics that back up your claim.
There is some speculation that cruse control would lull drivers to sleep, but in fact this happens no more with CC than withoug.
As for slow passing, that's mostly a fallacy, because every cruise control allows driver over-ride, and passing a slower vehicle at one mph difference in
speed is not some how more dangerous than passing at 5 or 10 mph. The same driver that will allow the CC to take them slowly around another car would pass slowly if managing their speed manually.
Constant adjustment is part of the problem. People yoyo-ing up and down the highway are the real risk inducers.
Its not the cars who drive that way, its the Drivers. (And to an extent, under powered trucks who decide to occupy all lanes passing each other in precisely those locations where they obstruct everyone).
Basic Cruise Control from the 60s and 70's could handle that situation. The problem is there are too many people who won't use cruise control, and too many entry level vehicles that don't have cruise control (it cost a couple hundred bucks for after market kits, and less if you buy it included in a new car).
Modern Adaptive Cruise control will keep pace with a preceding vehicle (up to you set speed), and detect potential rear-end collisions long before the driver might.
Usually that costs much more because you need optics or radar (25ghz) to detect distance of the car in front. But it saves gas, collisions, and aggravation.
(I'll never own another car without adaptive cruise control).
chemical imbalances go, that's never been supported by research to cause mental illness,
But the dread hormonal imbalance apparently can cause liver failure.
Or it's the "normal" and "expected" response, but for arbitrary value numbers different than you think they should be.
Certainly in the eyes of the less fortunate, petty theft may not seem so petty.
And grand theft might be something they never have to worry about, having nothing that counts as "grand".
Still, the law sets the value of various levels of theft. In Alaska, a stolen burger is Theft in the Fourth Degree and unlikely to receive any official police action, even if they did show up to keep the situation from getting out of hand. Your missing car engine case (contrived as it might be) is Theft in the Second Degree and most certainly would get attention.
Point is, the law makes distinctions, and so should adults.
Having a 911 button on a cell phone (bringing it back on topic) servers only to make people into children again, tattling to mom over trifles, instead of dealing with it as adults.
Refactoring should be done on a "need to basis". Need to implement a specific feature, but it's not possible within the programs architecture? Make the required changes and get on with life.
But starting a "Let's refactor just because" is a folly.
Its hard to know what forced this refactoring. Was it forced upon him by the totally mishandled move from KDE3 to KDE4, or was it something internal that he did, without realizing the amount of work involved?
Is he better off sitting back for a while while KDE again refactors its framework for KDE 5? Is that going to be yet another huge debacle, setting KDE back 4 years like the last re-factor?
At this point in time, KDE 4.12.0 is probably the best KDE in a long time. But 4.12 is probably the last bug-fix that the 4 branch will get, as all the developers have move on to 5.
Nonsense.
These things are designed to be almost instantaneous.
Old house.
Wait till you try to sell it.
Because for 60A they use different types. The gauges used at 20A and lower are more prone to failure. So getting a 60A wire and running 20A over it would be safer than getting an appropriately sized wire. Copper doesn't have that problem, and you always use the smallest wire for the job.
The problem with aluminum wiring was not that it couldn't handle the load. While a continuous run of aluminum wire does not present a problem, when that wire is connected to outlets and light switches the connection can deteriorate and become a fire hazard.
The problem was that it "flows" under the pressure of the connecting screws AND it oxidizes when exposed to air. Its a double whammy waiting to happen in every outlet or junction box.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/realestate/19home.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23683-2004Jul2.html