SoylentNews

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:Sloppy man, sloppy writing (Score: 2, Insightful) by Open4D on Friday February 21 2014, @02:46PM

  by Open4D (371) on Friday February 21 2014, @02:46PM (#4330) Journal

  Of course, people got to make a buck and Greenwald is slurping, nay gulping from the trough.

  Well, Greenwald is presumably doing okay out of the whole affair [theguardian.com], but in this case I would say it's this "Snowden Files" book by Luke Harding that is probably most guilty of sensationalism / bandwagon-jumping / fast-buck-making. And TFA doesn't pretend to be anything other than a plug for the book.

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+1
  Insightful=1, Total=1
  Extra 'Insightful' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		2