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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)

#21

Post by gs17 »

oliv__ wrote: post #12
waiseristy wrote: post #8

Quoted post unavailable.

I agree you should be able to do that without consequences but there's nothing brave about pulling down an American flag and stepping on it.

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.

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

#23

Post by belval »

not2b wrote: post #6
belval wrote: 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…

The "if there is any truth to it" remark was unnecessary. The author was very well known on the net when it was a much smaller place (the old Usenet days), and implying that he made it up is, to say the least, impolite. His Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Earnest

You may know him but I did not, so I erred on the safe side and added the "if there is any truth to it" as it's a much safer default to assume that everything I read on the Internet is possibly made up.

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

#24

Post by chheplo »

He was able to tinker with a radio at age of 10, in 1940. I had my first electronic at 19, in 2003, growing up in India. Today, almost anyone in the world can have access to the latest tech easily. Great minds were there and are everywhere in the world, they just didn't have access to resources. Think how fast the research monopoly of US is going to shrink.

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

#26

Post by Broken_Hippo »

Bootvis wrote: post #2

Fun story but the fact that he totally lost touch with his childhood friend over something so silly makes me sad.

It makes me even more sad that we haven't remedied that sort of thing everywhere by giving children rights, including free association with others. In other words, parents cannot govern friends and romantic partners.

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

#27

Post by torpid »

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 kicked off the computers for less than a year. A nice conference with FBI, police, my parents, IT and school administration. Fun times.

I learned my lesson to not talk about such things because their egoes were too fragile.

When they decided to give students in their website design class ftp accounts on the district wide web/email server running an ancient version of Debian, they didn't disable the shell, just added a login script to a menu for pine, etc. for people who telnetted in, which I'm sure the sysadmin was proud of. However, a few fast CTRL-C's broke out of his script menu loop and got me a shell, and they didn't shadow protect their password files. Ran it through john the ripper and had half the district's e-mail passwords in a default dictionary file including the root pw in a few minutes. LOLed and never told anyone about that.

Good times, the 90s....

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

#28

Post by belval »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #13
belval wrote: 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…

"and you are done" While I agree about the need for privacy, I don't think this story is a good argument for it. One of the interesting aspects of this story is that the main actual consequence of this privacy invasion was that he got his glasses back.

But that's probably because he was a child, not of Japanese descent, and one of the two agent actually believed the story.

If he had been a 30 years old Japanese weirdo that likes to keep "codes" in his wallet I am pretty sure the story would be very different.

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

#29

Post by tester756 »

>After we left the form by her front door her parents somehow figured out who had done that and, when Bobby’s and my parents learned of this stunt they decreed that we would no longer play together. We followed that guidance for over 40 years.

oh

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