Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash • Hacker News Board

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#71

Post by samstave » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

sage_joch wrote: post #10

corresation wrote: post #5

Another possibility is that he had a nervous breakdown or substance abuse episode, leading to both the paranoid emails and the irrational vehicle operations. Obviously I'm not saying that's the case, but the extremely irrational driving goes fits a theory of paranoid delusions (brought on by any number of mechanisms), just as the hacked car system goes with about to uncover something big.

Yeah, we really don't know. But I'm extremely uncomfortable by the fact that foul play is a real possibility. We already know that the federal government is operating largely in secret and without regard to the law (their insistence that are indeed following their own secret set of laws doesn't provide me much solace). We already know that various press organizations have been wiretapped. I feel like I've woken up in…

Did you guys see the 16 page PDF detailing remote auto take-over? Some are speculating that his car was remotely controlled via this method or tampered with such that his breaks failed.

If you haven't seen that PDF, ill to find the link.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#72

Post by byeworld » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #62

wyck wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This first question that comes to mind is what was he doing driving at 4:30 in the morning. His friends describe him as a "grandma diver" so why was he driving so fast and blowing red lights on a residential street? Did he ever display this type of behaviour before? Another question is.. how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly.

Another question is.. how does a well made car burst into flames so quickly. There was a lot of discussion about various aspects of how cars behave when they crash, in a previous thread. But, speaking as a former firefighter, the tl/dr; is "cars do sometimes catch fire and burn when they crash". Hollywood style explosions don't normally happen, and car fires resulting from wrecks don't always happen, or even happen t…

Interesting parallel (I know the events are not equivalent, but still):

Here's a report of a Mercedes crashed at Nurburgring by a test driver: http://www.automotto.com/2014-mercedes-benz-sls-amg-black-se...

Both the test driver and the passenger walked away unharmed. Do note that this was on the track, where the cars are supposedly driven at much higher speeds than on regular roads.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#73

Post by groby_b » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:22 AM UTC

reeses wrote: post #50

meepmorp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or that he was paranoid and thought he was being chased.

Or he was surreptitiously exposed to a mind-altering substance that made him paranoid, thinking he was being chased!

Or we're all exposed to mind-altering substances that make us paranoid, making us think he was exposed to drugs, thinking he was chased. It's the contrails, I tell you!

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#74

Post by oceanstone » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:24 AM UTC

fixxer wrote: post #13

Any idea what the big story was?

Maybe it was related to TrapWire, a cloud service that has facial, emotional, and behavioral recognition. It would tie in well with the upstream fibertap, and PRISM programs.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#75

Post by cjambassador392 » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:26 AM UTC

marvin wrote: post #54

potatolicious wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the US is also not metaphorically Nazi Germany. There's bad shit going on, but to equivocate the current state of the US to the Third Reich demonstrates either a supremely poor understanding of history, or hyperbolic melodrama, or both.

Actually, comparisons to Soviet or Nazi Germany work against their purpose. If the United States turns into a totalitarian state, it will look nothing like the instances of totalitarian regimes we have learned from textbooks. It will take a much more familiar and understandable form, not very different from how things look today. In most totalitarian states, life goes on like it usually does. It's just the power dist…

Non-sheeple like us here on reddit and HN see the US for what it is.

I wish the sheeple could see it too but they're blinded by the mainstream media.

sigh The curse of being an intelligent free-thinker.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#76

Post by TechNewb » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:28 AM UTC

LoganCale wrote: post #61

TechNewb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it known what story he was pursuing?

The subject of his email was "FBI Investigation, re: NSA". Don't know if the investigation is the same as his big story, however.

Wonder if his notes could be found, I imagine they would have been cloud backed.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#77

Post by ScottBurson » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:28 AM UTC

DigitalSea wrote: post #46

snowwrestler wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how conspiracy theories are promulgated: propose an preposterous alternate reality and then find real facts wanting in comparison. In this case the alternate reality is that it is "impossible" to crash recent model year Mercedes unless you intend to. This is obviously preposterous since it's not hard to find reports of such crashes with 5 minutes on Google.

It's not impossible to crash any car, the alternate reality here is that a brand new car with more safety features than a padded cell crashed by itself at 4:30am in the morning into a tree and exploded on impact. The point is these cars are built to try and avoid these kind of accidents at all cost, the plethora of safety features cars like these have makes it a lot more difficult than say an early 00's vehicle crash…

> When a car crashes isn't an engine pushed back into the cabin, not thrown forwards?

It certainly can be, but considering that he hit a tree -- a narrow object, not like a wall -- I could imagine that if the impact point was not in the center of the car, the tree might not have been directly in front of the engine, and thus it could come out.

Obviously he had to have been going petty fast, though.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#78

Post by dllthomas » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:28 AM UTC

skwirl wrote: post #44

sage_joch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we really don't know. But I'm extremely uncomfortable by the fact that foul play is a real possibility. We already know that the federal government is operating largely in secret and without regard to the law (their insistence that are indeed following their own secret set of laws doesn't provide me much solace). We already know that various press organizations have been wiretapped. I feel like I've woken up in…

It is a huge leap from the revelations of late and a world where the government goes around killing journalists. When your parents confided to you that Santa Claus wasn't real, you didn't suddenly become adopted too. Chill out and reacquaint with reality.

Because law enforcement abusing power and doing crazy shit flat out never happens.

I agree that foul play doesn't seem like the most likely cause, and I don't expect it is systemic if so, but seeing "he was on to a pocket of more explicit corruption and they offed him" as outside the realm of possibility seems odd.

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#79

Post by reeses » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:29 AM UTC

groby_b wrote: post #73

reeses wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or he was surreptitiously exposed to a mind-altering substance that made him paranoid, thinking he was being chased!

Or we're all exposed to mind-altering substances that make us paranoid, making us think he was exposed to drugs, thinking he was chased. It's the contrails, I tell you!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Cabin_nos...

Why would they need the little folding umbrella on the plane if they weren't worried about exposure to the chemicals in the black drums?

This is why I've asked the orderlies to let me skip recreation hour in the yard!

Re: Michael Hastings Sent Panicked Email Hours Before Car Crash

#80

Post by groby_b » Wed, Jul 03, 2013, 1:29 AM UTC

mrschwabe wrote: post #36

This Hastings incident has interesting parallels to Andrew Breitbart's death. http://rt.com/usa/coroner-arsenic-death-breitbart-456/ Namely the fact that both of these men were prominent journalists, living in the US, each with 'big stories' they were working on that have not seen the light of day due to their untimely death shortly after proclaiming they were working on said stories. To compound the dire possibiliti…

Uh, no. Breitbart was a lot of things, but certainly not a journalist of nearly the same caliber. And given that he claimed to work on "big stories" pretty much all the time, we can take that out of the equation, too.

And your disingenuous argument trying to tie drone attacks into that is an utter disservice to truth. To quote from the fine article: "could target a citizen if he was a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda involved in plots against the country and if his capture was not feasible."

Whatever your position on this is, you need to stretch mightily to make this into "the government is indiscriminately killing people it doesn't like".

So please remember that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And try to bring at least the tiniest bit of evidence to a post that's rather light on them.