Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word • Hacker News Board

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#121

Post by trendia » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:37 PM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #103

fencepost wrote: post #87

For people thinking that he should have known better on a technical basis, maybe but remember that during the time in question he was a 64-68 year old man (= graduated college around the time Unix was being rewritten in C) who's never worked in a technical field. By the time most of these capabilities existed Manafort had been management/executive for years or decades. That's not to say that he couldn't have learned…

Not sending a written paper trail should be covered in Criminal Surivial Strategies 101. Whether it's telegraph, snail mail, email or WhatsApp, this is just sloppy criminal work. For example Steven Cohen avoided an insider trading conviction by making sure nothing bad ever had his name on it. If you needed to discuss something secret, you talked to him in person. Background: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/co…

Link is dead for non FT subscribers.

(Or at least for those who the FT thinks would pay for a subscription)

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#122

Post by stevenwoo » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:38 PM UTC

makecheck wrote: post #35

The complexity of many file formats is staggering and I try (usually with no success) to convince people to rely only on simpler formats that can be audited easily. Another example: I seem to recall a case awhile back where Word change-tracking contained sensitive information even though “the document” didn’t seem to. Sadly it used to be easy to rely on plain text implicitly but then we made Unicode so complicated th…

They caught the BTK killer because law enforcement told him he would be anonymous if he simply sent them a word doc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Rader

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#123

Post by pasbesoin » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:39 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #56

jacquesm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buffet's quote applies to non-criminals as well.

More in the US than elsewhere. In Germany, you obey the speed limit, and only rubes pass on the right. In the US, everyone drives 9 mph above the posted limit if they're being careful, and people pass on the right willy-nilly, regardless of what local laws say. But if the police really want to enforce that on you, they can. There are tons of "blue laws" in the US, some from over a hundred years back. Sometimes the po…

Leave a small town downtown at 1 or 2 am (whatever is around the bars' closing time) with a light out -- even just a license plate light?

You may get pulled over. If you're cool about it and appear sober, you may just get a warning.

If things look more askance, you'll be put through sobriety tests.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#124

Post by stevenwoo » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

foobaw wrote: post #18

I'm sure they asked their "IT" staff to do the work for them. I wonder how they felt about doing these things

IT staff regularly have to lock people out of accounts/computers remotely after workers are fired or monitor everyone's internet access so they either get used to just doing what is told or don't work.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#125

Post by trendia » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:40 PM UTC

ordinaryperson wrote: post #19

What, the spending at $25,000 at Duane Reade (NYC-area drugstore) wasn't a dead giveaway of money laundering? https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/manafort-under-scrutin... (bottom) The entire inventory of the store is barely worth 25K, I assume he must have been loading up on gift cards a la Mexican drug lords ( http://am.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/10/drug-lords-using-gift-car... ).

Or he had some really expensive meds and bad insurance. That's pretty unlikely though.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#126

Post by zeusk » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

tgb wrote: post #53

raquo wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a Mac I think printing to the built in PDF saver might work?

Windows also has this now: "Microsoft print to PDF". Might be only Windows 10, not sure.

Windows 8 and plus

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#127

Post by zelon88 » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:43 PM UTC

Too bad Manafort and Gates didn't have an account on my unlimited Cloud Platform. They could've created an account, uploaded the .pdf, converted it to .doc, edited it online, and then converted it back to .pdf without being tracked. The only evidence would have been user-specific log files showing which user changed which filenames and when, but all those content changes would have been lost provided they delete the originals.

Hindsight is always 20/20 I guess.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#128

Post by woolvalley » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

Bucephalus355 wrote: post #29

jacquesm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manaforts crimes are as bad as they are because he and his buddies were instrumental in destroying a country that was already fighting for its survival and many people have died and will continue to die as a result of this. If you compare the reaction to the VW scandal to what is happening here it is funny how the 'end result' is so much worse in the case of Manafort that it is a miracle he's just indicted for what a…

Yes I see what you mean, and wow thanks for putting his crimes in a broader context. It’s my hope that “financial crimes” are just going to be a convenient way to indict the many many people who have committed crimes like him. Back in 2016, a weird / interesting / pretty smart idea in Clinton’s platform was to help the US deficit by only enforcing current tax laws. Lol that’s all it was, enforcing the laws that were…

How many of those tax laws were on the level of '3 felonies a day'? The US tax laws and their penalties can be pretty horrible, and you could possibly ruin a whole bunch of older middle class people who use something equivalent to turbotax badly.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#129

Post by pjc50 » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:45 PM UTC

freehunter wrote: post #5

There are certain things I cannot believe are still this difficult with as advanced as user-friendly technology is: sending files to someone else, and converting documents. Sending files to someone else is a problem with a ton of solutions, some of them better than others, but none of them actually solving the problem. Email often has size limits and spam filters block certain attachments. Dropbox is often restricted…

Document incompatibility is an entire industry. If you could convert Office documents easily, you wouldn't need so many office licenses.

Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word

#130

Post by alphabettsy » Fri, Feb 23, 2018, 7:46 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #104

alphabettsy wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People pass on the right because people block the passing lane. It shouldn’t be possible in most cases to pass on the right.

You've never seen someone pass a stopped school bus on the shoulder?

No, wouldn’t surprise me if people did. Clearly not what I was talking about. I’ve watched a car attempt to pass on the shoulder because two jackhats were driving side-by-side on a two lane highway going 10 under they lost control and nearly hit me. I was pissed at the driver attempting the stupid maneuver and the one blocking the left lane for miles on end.