11 ms·

How I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)

562 points by tjalfi 10y ago

bitwize 10y ago
Since you've admitted to making a habit of lying on U.S. government forms, I'm sure the FBI will be paying you another visit real soon, Mr. Earnest, to see if there are any violations of 18 U.S.C. §1001 they don't already know about.
- brewdad 10y ago
  He's 86 years old now. I'm not sure he's all that concerned about losing future security clearance.
- Jotra7 10y ago
  Bet you're a real hoot at parties.
giancarlostoro 10y ago
Great read also lead me to his mongrel[0] post which is equally a great read. I've heard different things about getting a clearance, such as depending on the company and job position it could speed up the process altogether. I've heard different things about it from (past and present) co-workers and family. His stories are quite a decent read, will have to bookmark his site. [0]: http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
- shitlord 10y ago
  > I've heard different things about getting a clearance, such as depending on the company and job position it could speed up the process altogether. My experience has been the opposite. During college, I had an internship at a defense contractor and I was the only Asian intern there (out of maybe 20 people). There were a couple of black guys and the rest were caucasian. IME, people of color had the hardest time obtaining a clearance. It took around 2.5 years for me and around 2 years for one of my black coworkers. The turnaround time for the white guys was a lot smaller. I think this experience was for the best though - I left shortly afterward, because I won't stay where I'm not wanted.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    There are natural reasons why getting clearance should be harder for those who aren't 3rd/4th generation native though, right. Like, if I apply for a job in Nigeria that needs clearances, if the other guys are all from Nigeria then investigating their backgrounds are consistent, talking to their neighbours, etc., is relatively easy. Especially if they all have parents who already have files with identity info. If I'm from Kenya, then first up you're going to need translators, then you're going to need political accord or covert operatives, birth records in rural Kenya possibly don't exist. Also you want to leave me for a while on observation to see if I do anything suspicious; that needs time. It doesn't matter if the Nigerians want me, to do the same level of investigation would take far longer.
    - e12e 10y ago
      In other words, you'd readily give Snowden a high clearance?
      - cirfis 10y ago
        Yep! TBH I think it really says alot about the general failure of the US whistleblower statutes/protections that Snowden had to release information in the way that he did and has subsequently been so easy to vilify. IMHO ol' Eddy actually went about the leaking of classified info in a pretty responsible way with the whole Poitras/Greenwald "Big Trouble in Little Hong Kong." However you feel about the guy personally the import of his revelations is pretty undeniable insofar as it stimulated legitimate reforms of the systems he was criticizing (see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Consequences_of_Edward_Snowden_NSA_Related_Information_Disclosures https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Conse... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying-programs-have-changed-since-snowden/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying...) which seems to me to be the basic test for legit whistleblowing. So, yeah, I would give the little eccentric a pretty high clearance given his track record... I'd probably let him out of russia too.
      - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
        Sorry I don't know Snowden's heritage or if he would check out under security clearance. He looks to me like he could have East European heritage. If his parents were from the country of Georgia, say, then I'd expect clearance processes to take far longer (with their local script I imagine far fewer security cleared translators, and that acquiring documents on parents/relatives would be much harder). Does that not seem reasonable?
- stefantalpalaru 10y ago
  http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm : > Though many people clearly believe that racial and ethnic classifications are somehow linked to science, I observe that their relationship to genetics is a lot like astrology's link to astronomy. He was right about that, just one year before the Human Genome Project started and fourteen years before it was completed. Today we know that humans lack a well delimited genetic clustering like the one we see in cats, dogs, horses, cows, etc. and that there are a large number of inter-group genetic distances that are shorter than intra-group ones.
- smnscu 10y ago
  Came here to post the same link. Such an interesting, insanely brilliant, character. http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/ http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
13of40 10y ago
A year or two after 9/11, I had a run-in with the FBI. I was living in an apartment, and one day at work, I got an email saying the local police were trying to contact me. I called them, and as the story went, the apartment people had come in to check my smoke alarm, and found some "suspicious items". It was never specified what the items were, but I think it was either my keg-o-rator or some of the electronics stuff I was always screwing with at the time. Or they just didn't like me as a tenant because my cats were tearing the place up. Anyway, I gave the local cop a tour of my apartment, thought everything was OK, then a couple of days later found a business card of an FBI agent on my porch, with "Call Me!" written on the back. So I called him back and arranged an apartment tour for him. (And here's how it ties into the article...) He showed up in a nondescript, white minivan, with another agent in tow, and they gave me what was, in retrospect, the most obvious good-cop, bad-cop routine you could imagine. He was a big, smiling, easy-talking buddy of a guy, and she was a harsh, suspicious hag of a battle-axe. I didn't have anything to hide, but looking back, if I did I might have totally fallen for it...
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Dude you should totally watch "Herbie the Love Bug" for a bit of a laugh! Guy gets accused of stealing a car and has to answer for it, even though he knows he's innocent. Miranda Rights are awesome haha.
- praptak 10y ago
  I would get a lawyer after the first email.
- louithethrid 10y ago
  Yeah, thats the beutifull thing about police states, noone wants to be responsible, so everytime some suspicious stuff is found (which in todays clueless society, running on black magic and fairy dust includes nearly everything) it has to propagate up the clueless chain to somone able to make a judgment and dismiss. So lots of people will waste your time - for nothing. So you better hide your soldering iron from idiots.
theparanoid 10y ago
OT my uncle does underwater passive listening for the Naval Electronics Laboratory, same as in the fine article. Apparently whales can mess up the sound analysis.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Is this comment some sort of honeypot?
  - andai 10y ago
    How would that work?
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      Watch all attempts to procure further information, make info available to track said "uncle" see who uses that info? I'm not a spook. It just seemed like a really strange thing to mention, the only use for the information I could think of was to find a naval worker who probably has a clearance rating.
big_spammer 10y ago
Les is quite something. He helped setup SAIL, the AI lab in Stanford with John McCarthy, wrote the first search engine in 1961, and made the first self-driving car. http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/ http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/ https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/sailing.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/sailing.pdf Oh, and he made the first social network: FINGER
6stringmerc 10y ago
I love how the story ends with a loving discussion of cycling competition and thinking of safety by way of helmets. Meanwhile, as smart as the narrator might be, it's funny how easily things can be overlooked. Cycling is one of the most cheating, dirty sports in the world. Sprinting is close, so is swimming. But talking about cyphers and codes and then somehow getting into a discussion about cycling just reminds me so much of Dr. Ferrari and Lance Armstrong. If you're not cheating, you're not trying. If the FBI is on your tail, you've screwed up somewhere. The devil's in the details...
- icantdrive55 10y ago
  I still wonder how much Placebo played in that last win after cancer, and they were watching him like a hawk? I just remember Dr. Ferrari claiming Placebo Effect. Something I doubt Lance knew anything about. We will never know. I wish Lance didn't go after people in court. I still think he's a pretty remarkable athlete.
BoiledCabbage 10y ago
Hasn't it been shown that mandatory helmet use has significantly reduced bike usage in the US?
- Mtinie 10y ago
  Yes, but it was concurrent with the automobile-ification of the US, so it's hard to trace that to causal effect vs. correlation. Here's a decent review from 2013. There may be new research, so if you have a better source, please share. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bike--laws-really-save-people/2013/06/03/6a6532b4-c6df-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bi...
- briandear 10y ago
  Is there mandatory helmet use (other than for kids?) The article in question is about mandatory use in bicycle racing.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    Helmet use is mandatory for adults here in Seattle. I don't know how common such laws are in other areas. I haven't had a bicycle since the law was introduced - not because of the law, specifically, but I feel grouchy about the idea of being forced to wear a helmet while doing nothing more dramatic than tootling around my neighborhood, and the law has therefore helped reduce my enthusiasm for bicycling generally.
- tbihl 10y ago
  I'm not sure about what US statistics are available, nor about how many US towns have such rules, but this is often cited as the explanation for why bike shares fail in many Australian cities that would seem to be perfect places for them. To borrow from the recurrent discussions on this issue: if biking requires you to suit up for urban warfare in spandex and armor, it's a much greater hassle, making you less inclined to bike. Furthermore, you look like a weirdo to people who may have been thinking of biking but don't want to deal with that large barrier to entry. So bike usage decreases, robbing us of the health benefits and probably making biking more dangerous because cars aren't looking for the rare cyclist like they ought to. Helmets in fast or competitive biking make loads of sense, though.
saganus 10y ago
"We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area." Wow, no wonder government agencies salivate at the idea of being able to monitor the whole Interwebs. I know they now have orders of magnitude more data to process but still... that manual process must have been expensive and boring as hell. I guess as an agent you would need to convince yourself that this was actually a very important task of defending your country or something. Otherwise I can imagine going crazy just doing this stuff for nothing... Edit: Another quote I found amusing: "The friendlier one eventually described how much it had cost to investigate another recent case where a person was reported to have pulled down an American flag and stepped on it. Only after the investigation was well under way did they learn that the perpetrator of this nefarious act was only four years old."
- ziikutv 10y ago
  Why the hell didn't they contact street car company and ask if someone was looking for them?
  - colanderman 10y ago
    Presumably said "spy" would presume that the code was found, and thus useless for them to retrieve, thus making the risk of discovery outweigh any benefit of retrieval. So the "spy" almost certainly wouldn't show up, and now they've been tipped off that the code may be compromised and the FBI may have become involved exactly in the manner they did.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ziikutv 10y ago
      I mean them asking the car company would have Eliminated that. It is the first rational choice anyone would make.
  - josu 10y ago
    Most of the times starting with the wrong premise is worse than starting with no premise at all.
hackathonguy 10y ago
I want to read a book by the guy. Amongst other achievements, Les Earnest was an actor, basketball manager and inventor of the search engine. http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/vita.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/vita.htm
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
kw71 10y ago
> However about twelve years later I learned by chance that putting slightly provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. I remember reading this decades ago and wondering what this might be. Now he's explained it! I'm glad I looked at this again.
- saganus 10y ago
  If you haven't yet, read the linked article. It's a very entertaining read that expands on this, although a bit long. [0] http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
  - kw71 10y ago
    I actually appreciate this one more. I feel like I have been reading a letter from an elderly person whose way of thinking and weltanschauung I can relate to. I am not a young person anymore, but always have been generally disgusted when talking to boomers and older generations about sociology.
  - JoeDaDude 10y ago
    Yes, the linked article, "Can computers cope with human races?" is the funniest thing I've read since Richard Feynamn's book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" [0]. [0] Courtesy of Northwestern University http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/~amir/files/Richard_P_Feynman-Surely_Youre_Joking_Mr_Feynman_v5.pdf http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/~amir/files/Richard_P_Feyn...
    - Nition 10y ago
      You could take this guy's stories and insert them into Surely You're Joking... and hardly notice honestly. Totally the same style and outlook.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
sandworm101 10y ago
These stories from more simple times are always a great read, but for me they illustrate exactly how different and more aggressive our world is. Sure, they were rounding people up and putting them in camps. That needs to be mentioned. But visits from the FBI can no longer be waved off and childhood fun. They really do come back to haunt you. Being investigated is far less dangerous than falsely claiming that you weren't. In the past this would go undetected but today's electronic paper trails don't forget such things. They will notice. The involvement of the school officials, even the parents, is also cute. Modern law enforcement doesn't hesitate to go strait to the kids. It is not unusual for a cop to pull a kid out of a class for a "chat" that could see them jailed. Parents often only hear about such things long after the fact. The image of FBI agents in a black limo is precious. That is intimidating FBI man 101. They still do the 'parked in the driveway reading notes' thing today, but only where they don't feel under any threat. If there is any potential for a firearm at the location, or any hint that the suspect is in any way dangerous, they don't hang around as potential targets. If you see them doing the parked thing, wave. Say hi. Or don't. To intimidate they must first be seen. They will keep up the act until someone notices them. If you really want to make their week, get in your car and drive away. They love a good slow speed "chase" before confronting you somewhere out in the world.
- pvg 10y ago
  The simple times in which, as you say, people were getting put in camps and the FBI routinely broke the law? There's always room for improvement but I don't think we have it quite as bad.
  - sandworm101 10y ago
    If you were a visible minority, those times were horrible. Few would debate that. But the average kid of any color today faces some very aggressive realities. Wozniak built a fake bomb as a school prank. Not a clock mistaken for a bomb, not a crypto scheme mistaken for a Japanese plot, a ticking bomb meant to terrify those who found it. And it did. Do that in 1973 and you can still go on to great things. Do that today and you'll be lucky to ever set foot in a normal school again. Good luck getting a passport after being investigated for bomb making, let alone the horror of being charged as an adult.
Nition 10y ago
Bet this guy would've got along well with Richard Feynman.
sverige 10y ago
I'm glad the government wasn't as good at monitoring things back in the 90s. I downloaded every version of PGP I could find once it was declared illegal for export. They don't even know what a dangerous guy I am, willing to use cryptography to keep them from reading my stuff.
kawsper 10y ago
There is a recent video of him where he did a speech after being designated as a “Significant Sig” by Sigma Chi Fraternity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEx9R0quRR0&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEx9R0quRR0&feature=youtu.be He seems to have created a YouTube account just to post the video, so I got the chance to become his first subscriber! What an interesting person, and what a life he have lived!
- Clubber 10y ago
  In Hoc Signo Vinces!
unityByFreedom 10y ago
> Two years later I regained my seat on the board as the riders finally figured out that the strong helmet rule was a good thing. It then started spreading around the world and has since become standard in racing organizations almost everywhere, saving hundreds of lives and preventing thousands of serious head injuries. I’m proud of that. Such a small section of this brief biography for such a valuable contribution. I guess your most important life's work doesn't make as interesting a story as when you've gotten yourself into trouble.
Yabood 10y ago
Funny story, so in 2008 I was admitted as a refugee. I flew from Amman, Jordan and landed in Chicago. Everyone that had an IOM bag had to go to a designated area to get their fingerprints taken. So when it was my turn, the officer took my index fingerprint, waited a few seconds then gave me a look, a WTF look, but didn't say anything. A couple of minutes later, two homeland security officers showed up out of nowhere and escorted me to a holding area. I wanted to find out what was going on because I was the only one out of the entire group (100 people or so) that was getting this special treatment, but the officers ignored me. I waited, and waited, and waited, then when I asked again ~ four hours later I was told "Don't worry, you're going in either way". Long story short, The FBI had a record on me because I was a translator for the US Army in Baghdad, but the record didn't say whether I was one of the good guys or the bad guys, so they had to contact the FBI to see what's up. Fun times..
- e12e 10y ago
  Travelling to the US around 2005 or so - a friend got whisked away into an interrogation room without any explaon entering the country. He'd been part of the NATO forces preparing for/participating the gulf I war - and they similarly spent some hours before letting him go with a "thank you for your service". Apparently they readily knew he'd been "in the wrong place at the right time", but took some time to figure out which "side" he'd been on..
- samstave 10y ago
  Please define IOM
  - ChairmanPao 10y ago
    One of these: https://www.fedasil-hosting.be/sites/5042.fedimbo.belgium.be/files/explorer/vrijwillige_terugkeer_Fedasil_0003.jpg https://www.fedasil-hosting.be/sites/5042.fedimbo.belgium.be...
  - greyskull 10y ago
    http://worldreliefdurham.org/iom-bags http://worldreliefdurham.org/iom-bags > Before arriving in the U.S., every refugee case receives a white plastic bag from the International Organization for Migration (I.O.M.), in which they should keep their important identification and other official documents.
nodesocket 10y ago
Ok, I get it you're a prolific hacker and well respected... But why does your website have to look like it's from 1994?
- sdiq 10y ago
  I had to tinker with the CSS on Chrome developer tools just so as to read the story. Regardless, a very interesting story with one of the most important part of his life story buried down there somewhere - his success in advocating for strong bike helmets.
  - a_imho 10y ago
    Preferences aside, that says more about Chrome honestly.
    - superkuh 10y ago
      Better at running Javascript "Apps" than rendering HTML.
  - wila 10y ago
    Not a chrome user, but doesn't chrome have a "reader view" like firefox or safari?
  - andai 10y ago
    What did you change about the CSS? Width?
- nullc 10y ago
  Maybe because 1994 had something right-- his pages load VERY quickly, are dense with interesting information, and display sensible in all browsers; you can't say that about the vast majority of the modern web.
  - gear54rus 10y ago
    > vast majority of the modern web Must've hit a sore spot or something... Even without a degree in design one can see that this page is nearly unreadable. The easiest (but not the only) thing to fix is to limit the width of the column of text.
tjalfi 10y ago
http://www.saildart.org/FINGER.SAI[P,SYS]13 http://www.saildart.org/FINGER.SAI[P,SYS]13 is the SAIL source code to Les Earnest's finger program.
michaelvoz 10y ago
This is some next level dick sucking.
- sctb 10y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230478 and marked it off-topic.
deavmi 10y ago
Ah. During the war this type of hysteria makes sense.
atomical 10y ago
Is your position that immigrants should be expedited through the immigration process?
- estsauver 10y ago
  ... I think those who risked their lives by being translators for our armed forces are probably due a bit of a fast lane.
  - celticninja 10y ago
    I think it's actually part of the deal when they give you the job, if not specifically then it is certainly alluded to.
    - steveklabnik 10y ago
      You'd think that, but it's not actually what happens a lot of the time, in my understanding. John Oliver did a whole show about it.
  - atomical 10y ago
    ... I think you should reread my comment because it has nothing to do with the armed forces.
    - atomical 10y ago
      It is great you guys are down voting me when the guy above me is being incredibly smug. Thanks for showing your true colors.
      - ry_ry 10y ago
        I don't think that's the case, I'm sure it wasn't meant like that, but your original reply did seem a little... provocative? Added to that, it's generally bad form to discuss the meta without adding to the conversation, which i suspect your post above picked up downvotes. I would expect to get downvoted for this reply too tbh. It's not a smugness thing, it's too avoid conversations getting bogged down in this sort of tedious exposition. For what it's worth, I didn't downvote your post, if it makes you feel any better.
soylentcola 10y ago
I love how he just throws in that story about running into "Alabama" and how she looked sexy. From a younger man I might have been tempted to call it a "humble brag" about how he chatted up a cute girl but didn't bother pursuing anything. But from an older guy, it made me smile because it's the sort of thing we sometimes just remember for years.

562 points by tjalfi 10y ago

Since you've admitted to making a habit of lying on U.S. government forms, I'm sure the FBI will be paying you another visit real soon, Mr. Earnest, to see if there are any violations of 18 U.S.C. §1001 they don't already know about.

brewdad 10y ago
He's 86 years old now. I'm not sure he's all that concerned about losing future security clearance.
Jotra7 10y ago
Bet you're a real hoot at parties.

giancarlostoro 10y ago

Great read also lead me to his mongrel[0] post which is equally a great read. I've heard different things about getting a clearance, such as depending on the company and job position it could speed up the process altogether. I've heard different things about it from (past and present) co-workers and family. His stories are quite a decent read, will have to bookmark his site. [0]: http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm

shitlord 10y ago
> I've heard different things about getting a clearance, such as depending on the company and job position it could speed up the process altogether. My experience has been the opposite. During college, I had an internship at a defense contractor and I was the only Asian intern there (out of maybe 20 people). There were a couple of black guys and the rest were caucasian. IME, people of color had the hardest time obtaining a clearance. It took around 2.5 years for me and around 2 years for one of my black coworkers. The turnaround time for the white guys was a lot smaller. I think this experience was for the best though - I left shortly afterward, because I won't stay where I'm not wanted.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  There are natural reasons why getting clearance should be harder for those who aren't 3rd/4th generation native though, right. Like, if I apply for a job in Nigeria that needs clearances, if the other guys are all from Nigeria then investigating their backgrounds are consistent, talking to their neighbours, etc., is relatively easy. Especially if they all have parents who already have files with identity info. If I'm from Kenya, then first up you're going to need translators, then you're going to need political accord or covert operatives, birth records in rural Kenya possibly don't exist. Also you want to leave me for a while on observation to see if I do anything suspicious; that needs time. It doesn't matter if the Nigerians want me, to do the same level of investigation would take far longer.
  - e12e 10y ago
    In other words, you'd readily give Snowden a high clearance?
    - cirfis 10y ago
      Yep! TBH I think it really says alot about the general failure of the US whistleblower statutes/protections that Snowden had to release information in the way that he did and has subsequently been so easy to vilify. IMHO ol' Eddy actually went about the leaking of classified info in a pretty responsible way with the whole Poitras/Greenwald "Big Trouble in Little Hong Kong." However you feel about the guy personally the import of his revelations is pretty undeniable insofar as it stimulated legitimate reforms of the systems he was criticizing (see: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Consequences_of_Edward_Snowden_NSA_Related_Information_Disclosures https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275019554_The_Conse... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying-programs-have-changed-since-snowden/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-the-nsa-spying...) which seems to me to be the basic test for legit whistleblowing. So, yeah, I would give the little eccentric a pretty high clearance given his track record... I'd probably let him out of russia too.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Sorry I don't know Snowden's heritage or if he would check out under security clearance. He looks to me like he could have East European heritage. If his parents were from the country of Georgia, say, then I'd expect clearance processes to take far longer (with their local script I imagine far fewer security cleared translators, and that acquiring documents on parents/relatives would be much harder). Does that not seem reasonable?
stefantalpalaru 10y ago
http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm : > Though many people clearly believe that racial and ethnic classifications are somehow linked to science, I observe that their relationship to genetics is a lot like astrology's link to astronomy. He was right about that, just one year before the Human Genome Project started and fourteen years before it was completed. Today we know that humans lack a well delimited genetic clustering like the one we see in cats, dogs, horses, cows, etc. and that there are a large number of inter-group genetic distances that are shorter than intra-group ones.
smnscu 10y ago
Came here to post the same link. Such an interesting, insanely brilliant, character. http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/ http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

13of40 10y ago

A year or two after 9/11, I had a run-in with the FBI. I was living in an apartment, and one day at work, I got an email saying the local police were trying to contact me. I called them, and as the story went, the apartment people had come in to check my smoke alarm, and found some "suspicious items". It was never specified what the items were, but I think it was either my keg-o-rator or some of the electronics stuff I was always screwing with at the time. Or they just didn't like me as a tenant because my cats were tearing the place up. Anyway, I gave the local cop a tour of my apartment, thought everything was OK, then a couple of days later found a business card of an FBI agent on my porch, with "Call Me!" written on the back. So I called him back and arranged an apartment tour for him. (And here's how it ties into the article...) He showed up in a nondescript, white minivan, with another agent in tow, and they gave me what was, in retrospect, the most obvious good-cop, bad-cop routine you could imagine. He was a big, smiling, easy-talking buddy of a guy, and she was a harsh, suspicious hag of a battle-axe. I didn't have anything to hide, but looking back, if I did I might have totally fallen for it...

6stringmerc 10y ago
Dude you should totally watch "Herbie the Love Bug" for a bit of a laugh! Guy gets accused of stealing a car and has to answer for it, even though he knows he's innocent. Miranda Rights are awesome haha.
praptak 10y ago
I would get a lawyer after the first email.
louithethrid 10y ago
Yeah, thats the beutifull thing about police states, noone wants to be responsible, so everytime some suspicious stuff is found (which in todays clueless society, running on black magic and fairy dust includes nearly everything) it has to propagate up the clueless chain to somone able to make a judgment and dismiss. So lots of people will waste your time - for nothing. So you better hide your soldering iron from idiots.

theparanoid 10y ago

OT my uncle does underwater passive listening for the Naval Electronics Laboratory, same as in the fine article. Apparently whales can mess up the sound analysis.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
Is this comment some sort of honeypot?
- andai 10y ago
  How would that work?
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Watch all attempts to procure further information, make info available to track said "uncle" see who uses that info? I'm not a spook. It just seemed like a really strange thing to mention, the only use for the information I could think of was to find a naval worker who probably has a clearance rating.

big_spammer 10y ago

Les is quite something. He helped setup SAIL, the AI lab in Stanford with John McCarthy, wrote the first search engine in 1961, and made the first self-driving car. http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/ http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/ https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/sailing.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/sailing.pdf Oh, and he made the first social network: FINGER

6stringmerc 10y ago

I love how the story ends with a loving discussion of cycling competition and thinking of safety by way of helmets. Meanwhile, as smart as the narrator might be, it's funny how easily things can be overlooked. Cycling is one of the most cheating, dirty sports in the world. Sprinting is close, so is swimming. But talking about cyphers and codes and then somehow getting into a discussion about cycling just reminds me so much of Dr. Ferrari and Lance Armstrong. If you're not cheating, you're not trying. If the FBI is on your tail, you've screwed up somewhere. The devil's in the details...

icantdrive55 10y ago
I still wonder how much Placebo played in that last win after cancer, and they were watching him like a hawk? I just remember Dr. Ferrari claiming Placebo Effect. Something I doubt Lance knew anything about. We will never know. I wish Lance didn't go after people in court. I still think he's a pretty remarkable athlete.

BoiledCabbage 10y ago

Hasn't it been shown that mandatory helmet use has significantly reduced bike usage in the US?

Mtinie 10y ago
Yes, but it was concurrent with the automobile-ification of the US, so it's hard to trace that to causal effect vs. correlation. Here's a decent review from 2013. There may be new research, so if you have a better source, please share. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bike--laws-really-save-people/2013/06/03/6a6532b4-c6df-11e2-9245-773c0123c027_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/do-bi...
briandear 10y ago
Is there mandatory helmet use (other than for kids?) The article in question is about mandatory use in bicycle racing.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Helmet use is mandatory for adults here in Seattle. I don't know how common such laws are in other areas. I haven't had a bicycle since the law was introduced - not because of the law, specifically, but I feel grouchy about the idea of being forced to wear a helmet while doing nothing more dramatic than tootling around my neighborhood, and the law has therefore helped reduce my enthusiasm for bicycling generally.
tbihl 10y ago
I'm not sure about what US statistics are available, nor about how many US towns have such rules, but this is often cited as the explanation for why bike shares fail in many Australian cities that would seem to be perfect places for them. To borrow from the recurrent discussions on this issue: if biking requires you to suit up for urban warfare in spandex and armor, it's a much greater hassle, making you less inclined to bike. Furthermore, you look like a weirdo to people who may have been thinking of biking but don't want to deal with that large barrier to entry. So bike usage decreases, robbing us of the health benefits and probably making biking more dangerous because cars aren't looking for the rare cyclist like they ought to. Helmets in fast or competitive biking make loads of sense, though.

saganus 10y ago

"We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area." Wow, no wonder government agencies salivate at the idea of being able to monitor the whole Interwebs. I know they now have orders of magnitude more data to process but still... that manual process must have been expensive and boring as hell. I guess as an agent you would need to convince yourself that this was actually a very important task of defending your country or something. Otherwise I can imagine going crazy just doing this stuff for nothing... Edit: Another quote I found amusing: "The friendlier one eventually described how much it had cost to investigate another recent case where a person was reported to have pulled down an American flag and stepped on it. Only after the investigation was well under way did they learn that the perpetrator of this nefarious act was only four years old."

ziikutv 10y ago
Why the hell didn't they contact street car company and ask if someone was looking for them?
- colanderman 10y ago
  Presumably said "spy" would presume that the code was found, and thus useless for them to retrieve, thus making the risk of discovery outweigh any benefit of retrieval. So the "spy" almost certainly wouldn't show up, and now they've been tipped off that the code may be compromised and the FBI may have become involved exactly in the manner they did.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - ziikutv 10y ago
    I mean them asking the car company would have Eliminated that. It is the first rational choice anyone would make.
- josu 10y ago
  Most of the times starting with the wrong premise is worse than starting with no premise at all.

hackathonguy 10y ago

I want to read a book by the guy. Amongst other achievements, Les Earnest was an actor, basketball manager and inventor of the search engine. http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/vita.htm http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/vita.htm

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

kw71 10y ago

> However about twelve years later I learned by chance that putting slightly provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. I remember reading this decades ago and wondering what this might be. Now he's explained it! I'm glad I looked at this again.

saganus 10y ago
If you haven't yet, read the linked article. It's a very entertaining read that expands on this, although a bit long. [0] http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
- kw71 10y ago
  I actually appreciate this one more. I feel like I have been reading a letter from an elderly person whose way of thinking and weltanschauung I can relate to. I am not a young person anymore, but always have been generally disgusted when talking to boomers and older generations about sociology.
- JoeDaDude 10y ago
  Yes, the linked article, "Can computers cope with human races?" is the funniest thing I've read since Richard Feynamn's book "Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman" [0]. [0] Courtesy of Northwestern University http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/~amir/files/Richard_P_Feynman-Surely_Youre_Joking_Mr_Feynman_v5.pdf http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/~amir/files/Richard_P_Feyn...
  - Nition 10y ago
    You could take this guy's stories and insert them into Surely You're Joking... and hardly notice honestly. Totally the same style and outlook.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

sandworm101 10y ago

These stories from more simple times are always a great read, but for me they illustrate exactly how different and more aggressive our world is. Sure, they were rounding people up and putting them in camps. That needs to be mentioned. But visits from the FBI can no longer be waved off and childhood fun. They really do come back to haunt you. Being investigated is far less dangerous than falsely claiming that you weren't. In the past this would go undetected but today's electronic paper trails don't forget such things. They will notice. The involvement of the school officials, even the parents, is also cute. Modern law enforcement doesn't hesitate to go strait to the kids. It is not unusual for a cop to pull a kid out of a class for a "chat" that could see them jailed. Parents often only hear about such things long after the fact. The image of FBI agents in a black limo is precious. That is intimidating FBI man 101. They still do the 'parked in the driveway reading notes' thing today, but only where they don't feel under any threat. If there is any potential for a firearm at the location, or any hint that the suspect is in any way dangerous, they don't hang around as potential targets. If you see them doing the parked thing, wave. Say hi. Or don't. To intimidate they must first be seen. They will keep up the act until someone notices them. If you really want to make their week, get in your car and drive away. They love a good slow speed "chase" before confronting you somewhere out in the world.

pvg 10y ago
The simple times in which, as you say, people were getting put in camps and the FBI routinely broke the law? There's always room for improvement but I don't think we have it quite as bad.
- sandworm101 10y ago
  If you were a visible minority, those times were horrible. Few would debate that. But the average kid of any color today faces some very aggressive realities. Wozniak built a fake bomb as a school prank. Not a clock mistaken for a bomb, not a crypto scheme mistaken for a Japanese plot, a ticking bomb meant to terrify those who found it. And it did. Do that in 1973 and you can still go on to great things. Do that today and you'll be lucky to ever set foot in a normal school again. Good luck getting a passport after being investigated for bomb making, let alone the horror of being charged as an adult.

Nition 10y ago

Bet this guy would've got along well with Richard Feynman.

sverige 10y ago

I'm glad the government wasn't as good at monitoring things back in the 90s. I downloaded every version of PGP I could find once it was declared illegal for export. They don't even know what a dangerous guy I am, willing to use cryptography to keep them from reading my stuff.

kawsper 10y ago

There is a recent video of him where he did a speech after being designated as a “Significant Sig” by Sigma Chi Fraternity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEx9R0quRR0&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEx9R0quRR0&feature=youtu.be He seems to have created a YouTube account just to post the video, so I got the chance to become his first subscriber! What an interesting person, and what a life he have lived!

Clubber 10y ago
In Hoc Signo Vinces!

unityByFreedom 10y ago

> Two years later I regained my seat on the board as the riders finally figured out that the strong helmet rule was a good thing. It then started spreading around the world and has since become standard in racing organizations almost everywhere, saving hundreds of lives and preventing thousands of serious head injuries. I’m proud of that. Such a small section of this brief biography for such a valuable contribution. I guess your most important life's work doesn't make as interesting a story as when you've gotten yourself into trouble.

Yabood 10y ago

Funny story, so in 2008 I was admitted as a refugee. I flew from Amman, Jordan and landed in Chicago. Everyone that had an IOM bag had to go to a designated area to get their fingerprints taken. So when it was my turn, the officer took my index fingerprint, waited a few seconds then gave me a look, a WTF look, but didn't say anything. A couple of minutes later, two homeland security officers showed up out of nowhere and escorted me to a holding area. I wanted to find out what was going on because I was the only one out of the entire group (100 people or so) that was getting this special treatment, but the officers ignored me. I waited, and waited, and waited, then when I asked again ~ four hours later I was told "Don't worry, you're going in either way". Long story short, The FBI had a record on me because I was a translator for the US Army in Baghdad, but the record didn't say whether I was one of the good guys or the bad guys, so they had to contact the FBI to see what's up. Fun times..

e12e 10y ago
Travelling to the US around 2005 or so - a friend got whisked away into an interrogation room without any explaon entering the country. He'd been part of the NATO forces preparing for/participating the gulf I war - and they similarly spent some hours before letting him go with a "thank you for your service". Apparently they readily knew he'd been "in the wrong place at the right time", but took some time to figure out which "side" he'd been on..
samstave 10y ago
Please define IOM
- ChairmanPao 10y ago
  One of these: https://www.fedasil-hosting.be/sites/5042.fedimbo.belgium.be/files/explorer/vrijwillige_terugkeer_Fedasil_0003.jpg https://www.fedasil-hosting.be/sites/5042.fedimbo.belgium.be...
- greyskull 10y ago
  http://worldreliefdurham.org/iom-bags http://worldreliefdurham.org/iom-bags > Before arriving in the U.S., every refugee case receives a white plastic bag from the International Organization for Migration (I.O.M.), in which they should keep their important identification and other official documents.

nodesocket 10y ago

Ok, I get it you're a prolific hacker and well respected... But why does your website have to look like it's from 1994?

sdiq 10y ago
I had to tinker with the CSS on Chrome developer tools just so as to read the story. Regardless, a very interesting story with one of the most important part of his life story buried down there somewhere - his success in advocating for strong bike helmets.
- a_imho 10y ago
  Preferences aside, that says more about Chrome honestly.
  - superkuh 10y ago
    Better at running Javascript "Apps" than rendering HTML.
- wila 10y ago
  Not a chrome user, but doesn't chrome have a "reader view" like firefox or safari?
- andai 10y ago
  What did you change about the CSS? Width?
nullc 10y ago
Maybe because 1994 had something right-- his pages load VERY quickly, are dense with interesting information, and display sensible in all browsers; you can't say that about the vast majority of the modern web.
- gear54rus 10y ago
  > vast majority of the modern web Must've hit a sore spot or something... Even without a degree in design one can see that this page is nearly unreadable. The easiest (but not the only) thing to fix is to limit the width of the column of text.

tjalfi 10y ago

http://www.saildart.org/FINGER.SAI[P,SYS]13 http://www.saildart.org/FINGER.SAI[P,SYS]13 is the SAIL source code to Les Earnest's finger program.

michaelvoz 10y ago

This is some next level dick sucking.

sctb 10y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14230478 and marked it off-topic.

deavmi 10y ago

Ah. During the war this type of hysteria makes sense.

atomical 10y ago

Is your position that immigrants should be expedited through the immigration process?

estsauver 10y ago
... I think those who risked their lives by being translators for our armed forces are probably due a bit of a fast lane.
- celticninja 10y ago
  I think it's actually part of the deal when they give you the job, if not specifically then it is certainly alluded to.
  - steveklabnik 10y ago
    You'd think that, but it's not actually what happens a lot of the time, in my understanding. John Oliver did a whole show about it.
- atomical 10y ago
  ... I think you should reread my comment because it has nothing to do with the armed forces.
  - atomical 10y ago
    It is great you guys are down voting me when the guy above me is being incredibly smug. Thanks for showing your true colors.
    - ry_ry 10y ago
      I don't think that's the case, I'm sure it wasn't meant like that, but your original reply did seem a little... provocative? Added to that, it's generally bad form to discuss the meta without adding to the conversation, which i suspect your post above picked up downvotes. I would expect to get downvoted for this reply too tbh. It's not a smugness thing, it's too avoid conversations getting bogged down in this sort of tedious exposition. For what it's worth, I didn't downvote your post, if it makes you feel any better.

soylentcola 10y ago

I love how he just throws in that story about running into "Alabama" and how she looked sexy. From a younger man I might have been tempted to call it a "humble brag" about how he chatted up a cute girl but didn't bother pursuing anything. But from an older guy, it made me smile because it's the sort of thing we sometimes just remember for years.