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No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

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Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#531

Post by mschuster91 »

thecatspaw wrote: post #407
kkarakk wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"working with" the fbi usually means the fbi provides hashes of images containing illegal content like child pornography and image providers give up any accounts that contain images with those hashes(google does it this way) they don't just give the fbi data access without a court order

Sure, but to be able to create the exact same hash as the FBI you need to be able to access the unencrypted content.

Local client creates hashes and transmits them together with the metadata and the encrypted data, Apple compares incoming hashes with FBI/NCMC/... databases. Easy as that.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#532

Post by Guest10928391 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #181
danso wrote: post #4

> Well, that got my attention. But not in the way they likely hoped. Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here. If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can? Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a prominent person post the details of a personal extortion attempt out of defiance for all to see.

AMI picked the wrong person. Jeff, literally, has tons of money, extremely respected in the business world. Forget about the embarrassment, if he secretly capitulates to this, then the real blackmail material would be the capitulation, not the photos. Cause if the owner of Washington Post bowed down to blackmail, every article published in the article will be called into question. And who gives a shit if a billionair…

Agreed, if he gave into the request this time, it would have only escalated. Fast forward in time. Oh, we also want you to remove this article, or stop talking about that subject. If you now disagree, not only will we release the photos, but it'll also become public that you've been our puppet for years, and both you and the Washington Post have no credibility and everything you've written in the past cannot be trusted.

I imagine this was the goal. They have some nude photos which are embarrassing and a chance for them to get in the door. If they could get Bezos and Washington Post to bow down on that, they'd have much more power and leverage going forward that could potentially destroy them both. Bezos called them out, and now all they have are these fairly meaningless Bezos nudes, which are not in the highest of demand.

I heard some people suggesting that it was a really poor move to blackmail Bezos in writing. However, if you believe the above, then it makes perfect sense. They wanted a very clean paper trail of their requests, Bezos and the Washington Post accepting the offer, and the future outcome of those actions. This would provide them with blackmail material much more valuable than the photos.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#533

Post by hirsin »

kumarvvr wrote: post #351
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.)

One thing for sure is that he cannot retro-actively edit an article on Medium, without medium knowing about it. I am not sure the same thing can be true with his own newspaper.

Fairly certain you can't edit the news/paper/ after it's been printed and distributed.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#534

Post by gpderetta »

inopinatus wrote: post #352
danso wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth pointing out that the only mobile device that Bezos has apparently tweeted from (publically) seems to be an iPhone. Doesn’t mean he didn’t have a burner phone for conducting his affairs of course. https://twitter.com/dancow/status/1093732934299856899

Genuinely disappointed that it is not a Fire phone.

That would be his burner phone.

... I'll show myself out.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#535

Post by abledon »

kbenson wrote: post #309
panarky wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> literally has tons of money If his keeps his money in $100 bills, then you're right. $136 billion would weigh about 1,230 metric tons. More likely, his cash consists of electronic entries in bank systems which weigh substantially less.

If you count the weight of the servers required to service all the funds at the institutions his money resides at, and the percentage of his funds compared to the overall amount at that institution, it still might be tons.

but what if you only accounted for the drives in the servers that contained the data ? would it still hit that 'multiple ton' threshold

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#536

Post by willvarfar »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #486
willvarfar wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can Bezos get a US court to impound the photos? Something akin to the UK 'super injunction'? That would make being caught leaking the photos perjury. The stakes are so high that AMI might well not dare to do that. Its easy to imagine that Bezos, whatever he is saying publicly, is also getting excellent legal consul privately and that two can play at the games that AMI is so infamous for.

Why? Because he doesn't want everyone to know that he has a penis? The kind of people who care about "celebrity gossip" will have no idea who he is, and the people who do know who he is won't care. There is no market for these photos.

Because he wants to cost them a lot of money?

We all hate when the big guys use lawsuits to stifle the little guys, but getting AMI execs tied up in legal worries and costs seems, in this instance, to have popular appeal?

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#537

Post by wkearney99 »

azeotropic wrote: post #503
preommr wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, just look at how well thought out the Khashoggi murder was.

Well Kashoggi is dead and MBS got away with it. Moreover, MBS's enemies know know what he's willing to do, and what he can get away with, and may be frightened into compliance. From MBS's perspective this sounds like a success.

Has "thus far gotten away with it".

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#538

Post by Symmetry »

vishnugupta wrote: post #519
Pharmakon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That gave me chills, and the phrase, If you’re going to shoot the king, you’d better be goddamned sure you’re going to kill him flashed through my mind. Well, they missed spectacularly, and now the man who has a rocket company for fun is clearly pissed.

Indeed! Even I was quite fascinated by that phrase. I really wonder if AMI folks did any what-if analysis before shooting off those e-mails. At least the best-case and worst-case scenarios if not exploring all possible branches. I mean come on, you are literally taking on the richest person on earth and didn't even evaluate implications!? Just to belabor the point, he's not only the richest person right now, he's amo…

This feels like they've similarly extorted many people before this and had gotten lazy, forgetting to keep doing that sort of analysis.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#539

Post by fxfan »

raphlinus wrote: post #79
defen wrote: post #66

> If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they say they’ll publish the photos, and quickly. And there’s an associated threat: They’ll keep the photos on hand and publish them in the future if we ever deviate from that lie. They never explicitly say that, do they? I'm not enough of a lawyer to know if what they did still counts as extortion/blackmail, but as far as I can see they simply descri…

Yes, they do explicitly say exactly that. Term 3 in Jon Fine's email is "AMI agrees not to publish" and that directly follows term 2, which is Bezos backing off his assertion that AMI is politically motivated in their coverage. And term 6 means they get to keep the blackmail materials.

I don't usually put myself in debates on HN but I have always thought of you as a very rational guy so I'm surprised you make this comment-

Situation A: where none of this happened. Ami reserves the right to publish photos. Perfectly legal.

Situation B: Present Offer- I wont publish them. But if you cheat- we go back to situation A.

Plain and simple. I am no lawyer bit everyone I've read today says that basically bezos has no case and his legal allowed him to publicize evidence and comment on 'an ongoing case'- commentary which can alter the 'case' pretty much means there is no case. The only thing that remains to be seen (or ignored) is when Ami will publish his photos because if they really want to play this game- that's what their next step would be.

Re: No Thank You, Mr. Pecker

#540

Post by futureastronaut »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #236
futureastronaut wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really calling a user who joined in 2008 with 12k karma a troll? I think it's nonsense that parent's opinion against Bezos was flagged, instead of the erudite references to Batman and The Wire in these comments.

The user’s tirade was beyond misplaced and off-topic.

On-topic comments like this one aren't flagged:

> I think Omar, Stringer and Machiavelli would have gotten along on some level.

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