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Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

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Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#241

Post by FerociousTimes »

brookst wrote: post #135
fooqux wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He searched the printer logs . Presumably when Word sends stuff to the printer, it doesn't bother with all the extraneous garbage it puts in files. Printer communication hasn't changed much in decades.

Still. He’d have to have the same normal.dot, make the same space/tab choices, same fonts, etc. And in a large company, how many ~1 page letters get printed? What are the odds that there is only a single match in the entire company? I take this story similar to the binary coded space story: more likely to be apocryphal and promoted to deter future leakers than true stories about catching them in the past.

> I take this story similar to the binary coded space story: more likely to be apocryphal and promoted to deter future leakers than true stories about catching them in the past.

Or have a printer at home on stand-by for your leak press releases. If I were Musk, I would have fired him/her not for being a snitch, but for his/her sloppiness and overall carelessness and lack of discipline.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#242

Post by yumraj »

Is there a mass email software that supports this? I haven't seen it.

On a separate note, I'm sure that by now he's pretty much destroyed the entire culture there. So, while many folks will hang around for now, since economy, but most are possibly thinking of leaving. In the end only the most desperate will be left there, so yeah, pretty hardcore.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#243

Post by registeredcorn »

jmbwell wrote: post #182
registeredcorn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it doesn’t seem like anyone really trusts anyone anywhere anymore No offense intended, but have you considered that maybe you're just surrounded by bad people? I have a reasonable amount of trust and faith in the other people that I work with. If I needed someone to pick me up in the middle of the night from the hospital, I'd trust my coworkers as much as I would trust my wife or friends. My company is hardly some "…

Fair comments. I’m not at a huge org, but I am in an industry not known for its optimism. I myself am not particularly optimistic lately. Maybe I should be!

Dang, sorry to hear that. I do hope things improve for you! :)

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#244

Post by yborg »

hash872 wrote: post #43

Ashlee Vance's biography of Musk (from a few years ago) had a fun similar story. Someone inside Tesla wrote a letter, I believe complaining about product defects, which was printed by a media outlet. Figuring that the leaker printed the letter at Tesla offices (i.e. likely didn't have a printer at home), Musk re-typed the letter in Word, found out exactly how many kilobytes a Word file with that exact text would be,…

Don't most large office printers watermark all pages anyway? Our Ricoh did.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#245

Post by tb0ne »

williamsmj wrote: post #198
zzleeper wrote: post #35

From Wikipedia: After a series of leaks at Tesla Motors in 2008, CEO Elon Musk reportedly sent slightly different versions of an e-mail to each employee in an attempt to reveal potential leakers. The e-mail was disguised as a request to employees to sign a new non-disclosure agreement. The plan was undermined when the company's general counsel forwarded his own unique version of the e-mail with the attached agreement…

Yep. The story as Musk tells it, and as goes viral every couple of months, is a lie.

Where has Musk told the story?

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#246

Post by dmix »

adrr wrote: post #45
mensetmanusman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Identifying leaks is toxic? Overuse of the word is probably diluting its meaning.

Leaking documents is indicative of a a toxic environment where the trust has broken down in all directions.

That’s a strange take. There’s tons of reasons why people leak things to the press besides: political/ideological concerns, employees who felt jilted, people who like the attention, reporters hitting up employees for information, etc etc.

It’s also far more likely to happen at a company that is a media darling where everything it does gets documented in papers around the world.

So naturally there’s tons of outside pressure for information to leak compared to typical orgs.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#247

Post by robby_w_g »

prepend wrote: post #85
greggsy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Margaret Thatcher did this in the 80’s to help identify who was leaking cabinet documents to the press. I recall a story about Jobs tracking down leakers in his own executive suite by telling each of them a slightly different things in private. Not sure if it worked, but it can be a very effective deterrent.

I worked with someone who would tell me very precise weird personal details (eg, “the left side of my mouth can’t taste”). I found it odd because they weren’t really pertinent and seemed really unique that I’ve never heard of anyone else with the condition. I suspected he did this to try to determine who they can trust when he would remark that people were liars or not trustworthy and one time a coworker told me a co…

This comes off more as pathologically lying rather than paranoia.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#248

Post by elliekelly »

marcusverus wrote: post #225
Workaccount2 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume there was also at least a minor degree of due diligence, such as "Would this person actually have had the knowledge to write letter".

It'd be even easier than that. Walk to the person's desk and ask them to bring up the document that they printed on ${printer} at ${time}. If he can't produce a document of the correct size, he's your guy.

This is a good way to fire innocent employees who had the audacity to edit a document after they’ve printed it.

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#249

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

LeafItAlone wrote: post #187
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have occasion to actually need to print something about twice a year. I don't know how it is that we live such drastically different lifestyles that you find them so incredibly useful.

I typically also only print 2-3 times a year as well. But those times are sensitive-ish documents (one being hard copies of my tax prep and return for my filing cabinet, even though it’s submitted electronically) and I don’t want them printed on a printer I don’t own (paranoia). (And my printer is not connected to the network, I connect via USB).

> one being hard copies of my tax prep and return for my filing cabinet

...what year is this? Like, I have some questions:

1) Why keep hard copies of documents created electronically when there are so many more redundant, more secure, and more convenient ways keep the electronic versions themselves?

2) What in God's name are you putting on your tax forms that warrants being that paranoid about who sees them?

Re: Tesla has used space characters in internal emails to identify leaks

#250

Post by ianferrel »

fragmede wrote: post #220
tablespoon wrote: post #197

If they actually did this, it's nice that they leaked their playbook. Advice for future leakers: 1. Ask your co-worker to forward you that email (because you "accidentally deleted it"), and diff to your copy, so you know if your employer is cosplaying as the CIA. 2. Retype everything before leaking or leak crappy photos of documents on your screen (or better yet, both). 3. Leak to a journalist and make them promise t…

ask your work nemesis to forward you the email and just leak that wholesale

This will work right up until they check the mail logs and/or your work nemesis says "oh yeah, I forwarded it to Bob."
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