Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#2The paragraph began to self-delete..
BOFH excuse #114:
electro-magnetic pulses from French above ground nuke testing.
at least it makes as much sense as the 'Russian hacker' assertion they made.
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#3[deleted]
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#4The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.
To me and Occams razor that sounds more like a stuck key than the NSA openly deleting stuff in a manuscript while you're writing it.
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#5The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping. To me and Occams razor that sounds more like a stuck key than the NSA openly deleting stuff in a manuscript while you're writing it.
More to the point, "keyboards flashing and beeping" is pretty much the polar opposite of what a professional organization like NSA would do. They would shred/unlink the file after its closed so that you'd never be the wiser.
But on the other hand, they wouldn't be in this guy's computer anyways because even if NSA were out to oppress him, he's pretty far back at the end of the ol' pri. queue. "Oh, no, not a manuscript, OMG, get Gen. Alexander on the STE-III!"
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#6This is a pretty embarrassing piece; it reads like something you'd find on a conspiracy forum.
1. Keyboards don't beep.
2. There are lots of more reasonable explanations for text getting deleted than "state agency wanted to play a juvenile prank on me and be glaringly obvious about it". A stuck key, an intermittent short across some of the leads caused by the coffee he spilled all over his keyboard (conjecture on my part), a glitchy keyboard controller -- we've seen all of these in our shop.
3. In Rio, "a tall American" immediately meets a fellow Westerner and "accosts" him -- by suggesting they go out and see the city? He's a spook because he dressed neatly and was in good shape? Hell, that makes me a spook too.
4. Choose one of the two following explanations for the iPhone behavior: one, a well-funded and resourceful state agency is hiring people to track a journalist writing a book about the biggest intelligence leak in recent history, and the people they're hiring are juvenile enough to use methods straight out of Hollywood to play a prank on their target's iPhone when he sends a text with possibly the most milquetoast insult about their methods in the history of ever; or, two, the iPhone crashed. (Your answer might be used to gauge your sanity.)
5. The hotel safe -- if it weren't for everything else he'd written, I might be willing to buy that this was a botched job. But in the context of the rest of the article, I think the more reasonable explanation is that it was a crappy safe, it never did work correctly, and he only noticed that part way through his stay in the room.
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#7The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping. To me and Occams razor that sounds more like a stuck key than the NSA openly deleting stuff in a manuscript while you're writing it.
The NSA is tasked with collecting information. If there was an operation, as it was described, this would be a PSYOP. Also, while the NSA might help, it'd be another agency with more HUMINT and clandestine experience who designed and executed the operation.
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#8This is a pretty embarrassing piece; it reads like something you'd find on a conspiracy forum. 1. Keyboards don't beep. 2. There are lots of more reasonable explanations for text getting deleted than "state agency wanted to play a juvenile prank on me and be glaringly obvious about it". A stuck key, an intermittent short across some of the leads caused by the coffee he spilled all over his keyboard (conjecture on my…
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Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#9This is a pretty embarrassing piece; it reads like something you'd find on a conspiracy forum. 1. Keyboards don't beep. 2. There are lots of more reasonable explanations for text getting deleted than "state agency wanted to play a juvenile prank on me and be glaringly obvious about it". A stuck key, an intermittent short across some of the leads caused by the coffee he spilled all over his keyboard (conjecture on my…
Windows beeps when you're pressing keys at the same time or just holding them down. I don't know the exact situations but I remember a "hot keys" notification popping up.
Let's consider the article is true and words were being deleted as he wrote them. How ridiculous is that? A. disconnect from the internet. B. The whole manuscript could be deleted with a few keystrokes if wanted. Why would someone sit there and delete out the "bad" parts while they know the writer is actually working and typing in the document? This makes absolutely no sense. PR stunt imo.
Re: Writing The Snowden Files: 'The paragraph began to self-delete'
#10The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping. To me and Occams razor that sounds more like a stuck key than the NSA openly deleting stuff in a manuscript while you're writing it.
To me it sounds like bullshit being invented by a reporter trying to spice up a story.