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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.]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Common Joe on Friday February 21 2014, @01:04PM
You were joking, but just to set the record straight: the NSA does have that capability. In a recent talk by Jacob Appelbaum, he claims they have the capabilities to record keystrokes without software. (How's that for a mind blower?) Click here [dailytech.com] for a pretty detailed view of the talk. If you want to know about the USB technology that I'm specifically referring to, load up that page and do a find on the word "ANGRYNEIGHBOR". Go to the second instance and it brings you right to slide he was referencing.
It takes a bit of effort for the NSA to pull off, but it is interesting reading and a bit hair raising. (I just skimmed the article because I actually watched the video it is talking about all the way through. It looks like it does a good job representing the video I watched.)
A word of warning: if you read that article in full, you better put on that tin foil hat if you want to sleep well tonight. ;)
With all that said, the original article where words were being deleted letter by letter sounds like a stuck key or perhaps what RamiK [soylentnews.org] was referring to. The whole deleting letter by letter does not sound like the NSA at all. I'm going to call BS on this.
(Score: 1) by cockroach on Friday February 21 2014, @02:19PM
Oh, thanks for that rather scary link. Joke's on me, I guess...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @03:01PM
Oh, that's easy. Just point an old-fashioned analogue video camera to the keyboard, and save the video on VHS tape. See? No software involved.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Common Joe on Friday February 21 2014, @03:51PM
Too bad you're AC. You obviously didn't look at my link. No cameras involved. No software involved. It is totally invisible unless you pull apart your USB plug and know what you're looking for. Finally, it transmits what you type into your keyboard so they can pick it up and they don't have to be next door. The link I provide / video I saw is one of the most enlightening things I've seen about NSA capabilities. If you think you know what they do because you can just pull an idea out of your butt, you're probably wrong. They are way more sophisticated and this article goes into gruesome details. If you're concerned about keeping a secure computer, I promise this will give you nightmares. Want another example? How about intercepts of computer hardware when you buy something from Amazon or Newegg? Yup. I'm not saying they do it for everything that is bought, but it can be done. Hey, AC, go read that article before you pull another idea out your butt.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MachineShedFred on Friday February 21 2014, @04:13PM
I guess I'd like to know why the NSA would go through all the trouble to delete it letter by letter, instead of just crashing the word processor, and then writing zeros over the file.
Why get rid of a paragraph in RAM when you can blow the whole book off the disk, easier?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday February 21 2014, @05:04PM
I don't know, but if I were writing a book about the NSA and my computer did that, I'd freak out. I'm not sure everyone would have had the courage to finish the book faced with domething like that.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2, Informative) by dmc on Friday February 21 2014, @08:09PM
Here are my favorite links for that kind of info-
http://cryptome.org/2014/01/nsa-codenames.htm [cryptome.org]
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/catalog- reveals-nsa-has-back-doors-for-numerous-devices-a- 940994.html [spiegel.de]
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/12/nsa-hacki ng-catalogue/ [wired.com]