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Being hacked while writing The Snowden Files.

posted by LaminatorX on Friday February 21 2014, @06:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the Nations-Spying-on-Authors dept.

fleg writes:

"The Guardian is reporting that while the author of The Snowden Files was writing it, paragraphs started self-deleting."

From the article:

By September the book was going well - 30,000 words done. A Christmas deadline loomed. I was writing a chapter on the NSA's close, and largely hidden, relationship with Silicon Valley. I wrote that Snowden's revelations had damaged US tech companies and their bottom line. Something odd happened. The paragraph I had just written began to self-delete. The cursor moved rapidly from the left, gobbling text. I watched my words vanish. When I tried to close my OpenOffice file the keyboard began flashing and bleeping.

[ED Note: Some of author's claims are of course unverifiable, but his insiders view of the early days of the story are interesting even so.]

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by SMI on Friday February 21 2014, @12:28PM

    by SMI (333) on Friday February 21 2014, @12:28PM (#4404)

    "*IF* the NSA cared about what he was writing, and they took the time to crack into his computer (plausible, but unlikely), there are so many other ways to prevent the information from being published without alerting the user."

    Perhaps alerting the user was the whole point. They'll let him publish, but they want him to put the TLAs in a certain light, and the easiest and most effective way to do that was to make that point very obvious to him. Considering some of the other stunts they've pulled in regard to the fallout of the revelations, there isn't much that I wouldn't put past them, especially at that time. I can say for a fact that the terminal hijacking which is described is *entirely* possible...

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  • (Score: 1) by jonh on Friday February 21 2014, @08:13PM

    by jonh (733) on Friday February 21 2014, @08:13PM (#4619) Homepage

    Maybe the NSA did delete his paragraphs while he was watching -- with the expectation that he'd go public with these ridiculous-sounding revelations, and damage his reputation in the process. An espionage double-counter-bluff?

    (Or maybe I just made that all up? I don't know who to trust any more...)

    • (Score: 1) by Richard Nixon on Friday February 21 2014, @08:48PM

      by Richard Nixon (2750) on Friday February 21 2014, @08:48PM (#4637)

      Your idea is much more sound than the guy above you. Attempting to discredit the free press is a tricky business...

  • (Score: 1) by Richard Nixon on Friday February 21 2014, @08:46PM

    by Richard Nixon (2750) on Friday February 21 2014, @08:46PM (#4634)

    Even for me, this is a little much.