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No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

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Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#421

Post by gyaniv »

slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

I really doubt that it was done by a US government entity. Trump is the president and all, but to hack and release (by a third party) the personal information if a citizen (not suspected or related to any crime) seems to me to be something that even Trump or his supporters can't do, the intelligence agencies just wouldn't do it in my opinion.

The Saudis seem like a much more likely party to do it in my opinion, mostly because we know they are willing to do a lot worse against people they oppose (or who oppose them).

That being said, I also think that playing the "A government hacked my phone" is a much better play on behalf of Bezos then claiming it was done by someone accessing his or Sanchezs phone (for example her brother who is supposedly a Trump supporter, like the link in the end suggests).

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#422

Post by masonic »

slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

  Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up
In other words, here is one of Bezos' employees backing him up.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#423

Post by opportune »

scarmig wrote: post #312
slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

I wonder how Thiel will react if it turned out Trump directed national spy agencies to attempt to blackmail a rival oligarch to force him to provide favorable political coverage to their ruling coalition. Being the committed anti-tabloid blackmailer he is.

well last I checked Thiel supports Trump ideologically and the Saudis are large customers of his, plus he wants more defense/spy contracts so since he's so far proven to be a cheap date in terms of business, I think he'll just side with whoever gives him more money

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#424

Post by bayesian_horse »

int_19h wrote: post #369
bayesian_horse wrote: post #240

At some point in the future we will look back at this administration and marvel at the magnitude of criminal activities surrounding this president.

I'm afraid that at said point, we will marvel more with the fact that the people at the center of it all got away with it. Remember Nixon, or Iran-Contra?

Maybe, maybe not.

The investigations against Trump and his people are already way past the scope of Nixon or Iran-Contra.

Particularly, at the very least, Trump is on the hook for state charges in New York about his Trump foundation. He can't get pardoned by a sympathetic successor.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#425

Post by markonen »

opportune wrote: post #419
samstave wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the CEO and Founder of AWS can be easily hacked by Saudis then what does that mean for the rest of silicon valley in general and 99% of YC funded startups who rely on AWS?

well it's a lot easier to "hack" one person's iCloud account (in reality you just need a well placed personal assistant or employee at apple) than an entire cloud infrastructure without being noticed

Okay, I'll bite: how would a single employee at Apple do this?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#426

Post by Mtinie »

bayesian_horse wrote: post #244
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Important note: This is written by Jeff Bezos himself . Normally, the Bezos affair story would be gossipy, but this alleges extortion , extraordinarily. (Also, why is Jeff Bezos using Medium? He owns a newspaper.)

Apparently it's not a clear cut case of extortion, because no money is exchanged. A "thing of value" may do, but it's not clear that AMI's demands rise to that level.

AMI is willing to accept a loss of future profits gained from running the story, in exchange for Bezos’s capitulation. If you have access to AMI’s advertising rate card and a rough subscriber count you can estimate the USD value this information represents.

As others have mentioned, “thing of value” does not have to be monetary. For example, there are a number of cases where a person was found guilty of extorting another for sexual favors[0] or to exact a particular benefit (political or otherwise) from a victim.

——-

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextortion

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#427

Post by elmomle »

masonic wrote: post #422
slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up In other words, here is one of Bezos' employees backing him up.

There is a conflict of interest between his role as employee and his statements regarding Bezos. But there would be a conflict of interest between his role as reporter and his statements regarding Bezos. You're not wrong per se, but my perception is that there is a very good chance this person is telling the truth, given that in every case I've known of where a reporter for a major newspaper has disagreed with someone on a matter of record, they've been right. (NB that may still be explained by biases on my end and I'd love to be given a more nuanced view).

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#428

Post by opportune »

markonen wrote: post #425
opportune wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well it's a lot easier to "hack" one person's iCloud account (in reality you just need a well placed personal assistant or employee at apple) than an entire cloud infrastructure without being noticed

Okay, I'll bite: how would a single employee at Apple do this?

IME if you are a part of an org/feature-specific security team at a team at large company you will be made aware of potential security flaws before they are fixed and merged in prod... so if some employee at apple learned "hey, auth tokens are being leaked in the usage data" they could hack basically anybody if they wanted to before the fix was merged and deployed to the public

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#429

Post by bdowling »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #253
notatoad wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"blackmail is legal" is a pretty depressing take, but it does seem plausible.

Blackmail is a law which forbids the possessor of some information from offering to sell it to the subject of the information. The possessor can sell it to anyone else in the world, but cannot offer to the subject. If I had an affair with a celebrity, I can start a bidding war for my story between all the movies studios, television studios, and publishing houses. That's legal. If I invite the celebrity to bid, then I…

What you describe isn’t blackmail. Blackmail is offering the celebrity the chance to keep you from offering the story to the others, in exchange for a fee.

If you actually had a setup as you described, all of the news outlets would publish the facts of your story, without paying you anything, because facts aren’t protected by copyright. The only thing you could sell would be an exclusive interview.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#430

Post by baybal2 »

samstave wrote: post #413
slg wrote: post #285

It seems like a lot of people are not reading between the lines of this post. Bezos apparently believes that he was hacked by either the US or Saudi government and that now one or both of those governments are using the National Enquirer as an attack dog against him. That accusation is much bigger than any other piece of this story. EDIT: Here [1] is a reporter from the Washington Post backing that up. The Bezos' cam…

If the CEO and Founder of AWS can be easily hacked by Saudis then what does that mean for the rest of silicon valley in general and 99% of YC funded startups who rely on AWS?

> If the CEO and Founder of AWS can be easily hacked by Saudis

Was he actually hacked? Saudi LEO could've easily got those pics from Apple legally.

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