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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:Careful consideration (Score: 2, Interesting) by dmc on Friday February 21 2014, @08:13PM

  by dmc (188) on Friday February 21 2014, @08:13PM (#4519)

  IF the intent was to destroy the text then yes, they would not have done it that way. OTOH if they wanted him to freak out and stop writing...

  Even better from their ratfucking perspective than getting him to freak out and stop writing might be to get him to freak out and write so freakily that he discredits himself. Remember that episode of the X-Files where they spiked Moulder's apartment tap-water with LSD? :)

  Parent

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