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Being hacked while writing The Snowden Files.

posted by LaminatorX on Friday February 21 2014, @10:30AM   
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.]

• Re:"The keyboard began flashing and bleeping" Re:"The keyboard began flashing and bleeping" (Score: 2) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Friday February 21 2014, @11:39AM

  by girlwhowaspluggedout (1223) on Friday February 21 2014, @11:39AM (#4243)

  Does that apply to laptop keyboards [www.taz.de]?

  "Ueber seine Erfahrungen mit dem britischen Geheimdienst erzaehlt David Leigh erst spaeter beim Bier. "Wenn Luke auf seinem Laptop tippt, dann bewegt sich der Mauszeiger manchmal ganz von allein. Dann ist klar, der GCHQ liest mit". David Leigh zwinkert in Richtung Luke Harding. Die beiden wissen, was es heisst, einen kontrollwuetigen Geheimdienst wie das Government Communications Headquarter herauszufordern." [converted to all-Latin characters due to Soylent's problems with UTF-8...]

  Also, thanks for pointing that out. You learn something new everyday :)

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• Re:"The keyboard began flashing and bleeping" Re:"The keyboard began flashing and bleeping" (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @02:57PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @02:57PM (#4336)

  [converted to all-Latin characters due to Soylent's problems with UTF-8...]

  Better convert them to HTML entities. SoylentNews handles those correctly. Proof:

  "Über seine Erfahrungen mit dem britischen Geheimdienst erzählt David Leigh erst später beim Bier. "Wenn Luke auf seinem Laptop tippt, dann bewegt sich der Mauszeiger manchmal ganz von allein. Dann ist klar, der GCHQ liest mit". David Leigh zwinkert in Richtung Luke Harding. Die beiden wissen, was es heißt, einen kontrollwütigen Geheimdienst wie das Government Communications Headquarter herauszufordern."

  But yes, I hope Soylent UTF-8 will work soon.

  Parent

  • Re:"The keyboard began flashing and bleeping" (Score: 2) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Friday February 21 2014, @03:04PM

    by girlwhowaspluggedout (1223) on Friday February 21 2014, @03:04PM (#4345)

    Thank you, kind AC!

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    Soylent is the best disinfectant.

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