Another life ruined by not knowing LaTeX
...and other criminal activity.
Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
101–110 of 238 posts
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#102Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#103For 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/content/efda2ca2-ec6...
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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?
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's kind of strange. In the U.S., people get angry if they get a speeding ticket for going 12 miles over the speed limit (see any conversation about speed cameras). There doesn't seem to be any push back against having speed limits; rather, it seems like most people think we should have them and then ignore them.
Speed limits are to tax tourists and provide an excuse to harass blacks. /s
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#106The whole point of a PDF is that it's an artifact that isn't meant to be edited. You edit the source document that the PDF was generated from, then generate a new PDF from that. In this case, Manafort specifically couldn't do that because he was up to something shady. If people were using the electronic signatures properly, his modifications would've stuck out like a sore thumb.
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#107This is an example of bad technology failing its user. These programs should protect user privacy by stripping identifying information by default, allowing the user the option to preserve it. All technology should protect its users by default, otherwise everyone is at risk, not just the bad guys.
Actually that's one example where lack of privacy accidentally leads to a good outcome for society.
Also he was not failed by a piece of software. They recovered the document from his email. How would his email strip the document of identifying information?
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#108Hilarious those journalists
"I attempted to transform my Word draft of this blog post into a PDF. I confess that I did fumble a bit at first (it’s been a while), but I eventually managed to get the job done. According to my stopwatch, the full ordeal took me 42 seconds."
When the real problem ws turning a PDF into Word.
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
$1 is going to struggle to beat free: https://online2pdf.com/remove-pdf-restrictions
I always find it hard to trust free. Even with T&Cs/ToS/Privacy, if I'm not paying for it, I feel that its all lies. Combine that with a site that looks like that, and I'm assuming my PDF will have a virus attached to it.
Sure, but you're thinking about that kind of stuff even slightly, you're not going to be uploading your documents anywhere. I suspect the Venn diagram overlap between "thinks about online security" and "uploads documents to random web sites, even if they cost money" is small.
Re: Manafort Left an Incriminating Paper Trail Converting PDFs to Word
#110Nixon was caught because he taped himself obstructing justice. Manafort was caught because he emailed incriminating documents in the clear. How the hell are we going to catch criminals who somehow avoid doing monumentally stupid things?
Different context but Buffett's quote “If a cop follows you for 500 miles, you’re going to get a ticket,” applies here. If you are a criminal you don't violate only one law. You tend to violate multiple laws and at some point you are going to be sloppy.
And just to be overly clear, the quote does not generalize to: "If the FBI watches you for 500 days, you're going to get charged with money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States".