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I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

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Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#131

Did anyone else look into his Stanford biography page? Pretty insane stuff. https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/ http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/bucket/ In a section headed by an anime girl, he claims to have, "figured out when and how a bunch of other fantasies got into our DNA and will shortly post an article on this web site that will explain how that happened, why it is causing modern humans to make billions of…

Found a couple links [0][1] that appear to be follow-ups to that section about fantasies.

[0]: https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/earth/fantasy.html

[1]: https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/earth/fantasies.html

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#132
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the flag wasn't your property (and that you weren't a four year old like in the story), you probably shouldn't be allowed to do it, but it should be at most a minor vandalism case for local police, not the FBI.

> you probably shouldn't be allowed to do it Why, assuming it belongs to you?

I said to assume the opposite of that. The case they were citing was definitely not the owner of the flag doing it.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#133
post #127
post #27

My FBI file was for hacking into my school district's AS/400 that handled my school's attendance and grading system. Somehow using a public IP address with no access restrictions allowed a clear telnet path in from home. Compounding username and passwords that were all the same for every employee. I didn't change a thing, just LOLed and told someone. Bad mistake. This was the late 90s. Oh well, 2 week suspension and…

When I was 11 or 12 we had a bunch of old Windows (2000?) boxes with a shared network folder — all the students' files were in the same folder. I had just learned about basic batch file "programming" so I made one called Change Your Grades Click Here!!.bat which asked for your username and password (we had individual accounts on the Mac computers) and saved them to a hidden text file in the same folder. Most people d…

> I got one girl's login that actually worked, which scared the shit out of me, and I deleted the program. (I really wanted to tell her that "emma" is not a good password, but I thought it wouldn't turn out well for me.

With all due respect for HN policy of nuanced, Intelligent debate.

"Wimp"

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#134
post #98

Please sir max-width: 100%; overflow-x: none; Edit: sorry completely messed up my css

Anyone know what unholy magic generated this page's HTML? Microsoft Word -> "Export to HTML" or something?

Seems likely - it starts out like this:

    

    
    
    
    
    

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#135
post #3

This story (assuming it's true) should serve as an excellent example of why you need privacy even if you think that you don't. In peace time the NSA is only looking for "terrorist" and leaves everyone alone, but in case of war they would start creating lists for any and everything. All it takes is one "tough" agent trusting their gut feeling/algorithm based on your browsing history and shopping habits to put a target…

> In peace time

And honestly, when was the last time of any significant duration when the US was not involved in a military conflict?

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#136
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if there is any historical evidence backing that up (IE, Tim Berners-Lee used Finger protocol as an inspiration. A lot of the UNIX protocols of the time were like that (NNTP in particular), simple call/response with textual commands and arguments.

Let's ask. Also 79 -> 80... that's a bit of a hint. Edit: asked.

I think that's because Dr. Lee picked the lowest unused port at that time.

But let us know.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#137
post #3

This story (assuming it's true) should serve as an excellent example of why you need privacy even if you think that you don't. In peace time the NSA is only looking for "terrorist" and leaves everyone alone, but in case of war they would start creating lists for any and everything. All it takes is one "tough" agent trusting their gut feeling/algorithm based on your browsing history and shopping habits to put a target…

Seems like the safest bet would be to fully inventory every human, know everything about them as well or better than they do, and then, once you're highly assured of their safety to the commonwealth of the country monitor them for even the slightest changes in their disposition or regular pattern of activity.

Of course, you would have to completely disregard any concept that people would have a freedom to privacy to do that, and you would also have to account for natural changes over time.

People make new friends, get exposed to new ideas, and gradually change no matter how hard you try to lock them in a box. The data storage and processing requirements to monitor America's 350 million people would be understated as staggering, the man hours for perfect enforcement incalculable, and even if you reached Pareto parity (monitoring 80% of the highest-risk individuals 100% of the time) you're still going to have people slip through the cracks.

I would place a $100 bet on this already being the practice of the 3 letter agencies and if they haven't fully rolled it out I would hazard an extra tenner on that they're within 5 years of completing it as long as their funding isn't disrupted.

The only defense most of us have against it is that we're not individually interesting so we probably never register as more than a blip on a hard drive somewhere under most circumstances, human eyes never prying into the worlds we make for ourselves.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#139

This story contains a link to another of his stories (also published in Communications of the ACM, February 1989). Old as it is, it seems quite relevant in our current race-obsessed culture: https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm

Yeah, I read that. I wonder if in another 75 years we'll have become as much more enlightened about race as we did from the 1950's to now and look back on some of our present policies and practices with horror and disgust.

Seems unlikely, the first 80% of improvement is the easiest and we've got to be somewhere close to that now, but I could be wrong.

Re: I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

#140
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's ask. Also 79 -> 80... that's a bit of a hint. Edit: asked.

I think that's because Dr. Lee picked the lowest unused port at that time. But let us know.

If he answers, for sure.
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