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How does this constitute hacking? The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop.

How does this constitute hacking? The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. The data is theirs to do with as they please and they chose to publish it (at least, that's the story). No hacking necessary.

sangnoir 6y ago
> The data is theirs to do with as they please. No hacking necessary. I'd love to see the jurisprudence on this. If there are any photos, do they also get the copyrights? Can they share any nudes they find? How about that Adobe license? As a non-lawyer, it is clear that owning the medium doesn't mean you own the information on it (or the cloud wouldn't be a thing). If we agree on that, then logically, it is possible to exfiltrate information that does not belong to you without authorization, which I think can be called "hacking".
- CivBase 6y ago
  Ownership of data is not the same as ownership of publication rights. However, the pictures and emails in question were clearly not copyrighted or licensed. If transferring ownership of a physical data storage device does not constitute transferring ownership of the data stored therein, then I don't know what does. When it comes to the cloud, that sounds more to me like leasing storage rights, but I'm no lawyer.
  - nkurz 6y ago
    However, the pictures and emails in question were clearly not copyrighted or licensed. I think you misunderstand US copyright law. With few exceptions, almost all pictures and emails are copyright by whoever took the picture or wrote the email. Is there some reason that these would not qualify?
    - CivBase 6y ago
      > I think you misunderstand US copyright law. I probably do. This is the first I've heard of that. Regardless, the NY Post article in question did not publish any of the pictures and I doubt the same copyright law applies to emails.
      - philipkglass 6y ago
        It looks like copyright does apply to the vast majority of emails based on the text of applicable laws. "Northeastern University Law Review: Do Not Forward: Why Passing Along an Email May Constitute Copyright Infringement" http://nulawreview.org/extralegalrecent/do-not-forward-why-passing-along-an-email-may-constitute-copyright-infringement http://nulawreview.org/extralegalrecent/do-not-forward-why-p... However, the issue has not been well tested in courts. The piece ends by saying "Congress should act to clarify whether and when forwarding an email infringes the author’s reproduction right in the work."
        mrkstu 6y ago
        Since when has any news outlet considered copyright when publishing information of public interest? That is core fair use.
        leereeves 6y ago
        If copyright applied in cases like this, any politician who said or wrote something embarrassing could block reporting it.
        philipkglass 6y ago
        Usually the embarrassing information is published before the embarrassed party is aware that their dirty laundry is about to go public. Once the information is out there, a copyright infringement suit is usually an irrelevant or losing move for managing the politician's image. I would rate this story worse for Biden if he filed a copyright infringement suit against the computer repair guy or the Post, for example. Using copyright could prevail legally yet lose in the more politically important court of public opinion.
    - panny 6y ago
      >Is there some reason that these would not qualify? I believe excerpts of pictures or emails taken for news reporting qualifies as fair use. It's not like they showed the whole picture, they just cropped his face with the crack pipe in his mouth. Likewise, the full emails where they discuss illegally peddling influence and pay for play with all the headers wasn't published. Just select emails with enough metadata to give context. Copyright doesn't supersede the first amendment right of free press. At worst, the NYPost is on the hook for $150,000 per violation. They can probably make that much and then some on the scoop. It may be worth it to them, even if they lose on a fair use argument. It's a huge scoop in October of an election year.
      - nkurz 6y ago
        All true, in my not-a-lawyer opinion. The important addition is that "fair use" is a defense that allows the use of copyrighted material in certain circumstances. Like a book review that includes an excerpt from a novel, the underlying material is still protected by copyright. It doesn't mean the material is "not copyrighted"---the whole reason fair use applies is because it is protected by copyright. Practically all emails and photos that contain any element of originality are protected by copyright.
  - zaroth 6y ago
    US news publishers are not prohibited from publishing copyrighted information for the purpose of making the news. That’s part of the First Amendment. Whether the repair shop owner had copyright to the content is totally irrelevant. He had legal possession of the drive, and handed it to a journalist who found something newsworthy on it. Almost every single major story every told in modern history will contain essentially the same type of information transfer, and it is not illegal for the journalist to use this information or publish it if it’s newsworthy. Sometimes a source can go to jail for sharing the information. But almost certainly that won’t happen in this case, because there is no evidence that the repair shop owner did anything wrong. In fact, he was the one who called the FBI!
    - nobody9999 6y ago
      >Whether the repair shop owner had copyright to the content is totally irrelevant. He had legal possession of the drive, and handed it to a journalist who found something newsworthy on it. No. He handed it to a lawyer working for the President of the US' personal lawyer (Rudy Guiliani), not a journalist. Guiliani handed it to the NY Post and then worked with them.
- ummonk 6y ago
  The nudes isn't even hypothetical - reportedly the data included intimate videos.
- boogies 6y ago
  So is all piracy hacking?
  - throwawaygh 6y ago
    S/hacking/violation of CFAA or similar state statute. Hacking is often used as a shortcut for “computer crime”.
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      Should Twitter ban all copyright-infringing images by saying they violate a rule against "hacking"? Almost all memes are copyright-infringing.
      - throwawaygh 6y ago
        ...no? I was just clarifying what was meant by hacking.
        Thorrez 6y ago
        I was more asking about what Twitter's view is. If they consider copyright violation to be hacking, and they have a rule against hacking, do they ban all copyright violation with that rule. Considering copyright violation to be hacking seems pretty out there to me, and I haven't seen clear evidence that Twitter actually holds that point of view.
- om2 6y ago
  Copyright violation is not hacking.
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    I made no such argument - I was establishing rules around ownership of information when the medium belongs to someone else, seeing that you cannot hack your own information (gp's argument)
nobody9999 6y ago
>How does this constitute hacking? IIUC, the idea is that the whole thing was a setup from start to finish: 1. Burisma emails were hacked; 2. Hunter Biden's iCloud account was hacked; 3. They bought a Mac, dumped a bunch of the hacked photos, along with some real hacked emails and some forged ones; 4. Sent someone over to the computer shop with the frame up on the laptop already in place; 5. Either the store owner was complicit from the beginning, or they just used him as a dupe. The above may or may not be true. But again, IIUC that's the line that Twitter is taking. If that's what Twitter believe (or can credibly claim to believe), then they're executing the policies in their TOS. I'm not saying it's true, and I'm not saying it ain't. That's just my understanding of Twitter's stand on this.
- SaintGhurka 6y ago
  That seems like an extraordinarily risky undertaking. You would certainly be found out and face real consequences. Remember the guy got the FBI involved, which would make the whole operation a federal crime.
  - javagram 6y ago
    Look up the Skripal poisoning. Russian agents have operated in NATO countries before to do stuff like this. That said, the “hack” theory is pretty weak, I believe it mainly relies on a coincidence that Burisma was hacked last year https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-burisma-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hacke... However, the computer shop guy claims the laptop was dropped off in early 2019 and this article says the Russians hacked Burisma in November 2019. The email PDFs themselves provided by the NY Post are dated September 2019, so stuff doesn’t add up here.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - qqqwerty 6y ago
    There is no shortage of Republican operatives that will risk jail time to further their cause. See [1] for example. And regarding the FBI, they were hoping that the FBI would open some sort of investigation, which would give the issue much more credibility. But that failed, so plan b was to just hand it over to NY Post. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-michigan-robocall-voter-intimidation-felony-charges https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-...
Robotbeat 6y ago
That isn’t a credible argument. Why would Hunter Biden, whose dad is running for President, leave his laptop at a Trump-supporting discount computer repair shop without paying with (supposedly) incriminating emails on it? It’s so convoluted... it only makes sense if you wanted to fabricate cover for illegally hacking someone’s data (or more likely, modified and/or falsified data) and releasing it. As it is, the computer repair shop doesn’t own copyright of the PII and has no right to release it.
- souprock 6y ago
  He's left valuable stuff before. He left his wallet and a crack pipe in a rental car that he returned. Some people are just forgetful. Aside from the leak, it's also not the loss that it would be for most of us. He's rich. He had some sort of iCloud backup thing (sorry not a Mac user) to restore all the data, so he wasn't missing anything. Picking up an old laptop wouldn't be worthwhile if a replacement arrived before the old one was repaired.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    The loss is that he left (supposedly) incriminating data on a laptop. That is incredibly valuable no matter how rich he supposedly is. It's just not a credible argument. (And again, note that the repair shop owner never saw who dropped off the laptop. He just inferred it was Hunter Biden because there was apparently a Beau Biden sticker on the laptop.)
    - tlear 6y ago
      Have you ever interacted over a period of time with a crack addict? Crackhead does not think the same way or act in any sort of reasonable manner. Well sometimes they do and then next day they break into a house crack a woman on the head killing her and get put into prison. While having enough money in the bank to stay high for years. It does not make sense but that is what one former classmate of mine did. None of it surprising in any way.
    - boogies 6y ago
rch 6y ago
Not following the details of the story, but has anyone suggested that Hunter dropped off the laptop himself? Stealing a laptop and causing a bit of damage to initiate a costly repair, then leaving it with a shop under an assumed name seems like a solid Mitnick-level hack to me.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  I think the most likely scenario is that he went on a bender (he has well known substance abuse problems) and locked himself out, dropped it off to get it fixed, and forgot about it. This seems much more plausible than some of the other extremely complex theories which assume that, ahem, Rudy Gulianni (of all people) was able to plan a years long scam to procure this particular computer.
  - therealdrag0 6y ago
    Is there any evidence the computer is legit? The only indisputable thing is the photos right? And those could have been hacked from anywhere. Or am I missing something? (I haven’t studied it much)
    - 6nf 6y ago
      There's lots of stuff on there that only Hunter would know. It's legit.
  - seppin 6y ago
    Or, none of the leaked data came from the "computer" in question. Hunter's iCloud backup was hacked, Burisma's internal emails were breached by the GRU last year. Combine those two sources, mix real correspondences with some forgeries, and blame it all on a single laptop a MAGA supporter happened upon in rural Delaware. Makes perfect sense, if you want it to.
    - remarkEon 6y ago
      Yeah, sure, certainly plausible. But that's a lot more complicated than a guy who has a substance abuse problem doing things with his computer that a guy with a substance abuse problem would probably do (btw Hunter is sober now, I think).
qqqwerty 6y ago
Here is a good explanation of what likely happened[1]. The laptop shows up at this repair shop in early 2019, and the shop owner "declared that because he is legally blind, he could not identify the person who brought it in". Supposedly, this blind shop owner then gains access to the computer (doesn't say how, was it unprotected?) and it contains lewd videos of Hunter (again, blind shop owner). So he copies the drive (which is likely illegal in Delaware) and then he reached out to the FBI, or the FBI reached out to him, or someone else reached out to the shop owner (i.e. Rudy) and told him to reach out to the FBI. We don't really know because they can't get their story straight on that one. Months later, and the FBI still hasn't announced an investigation, so they go to Plan B and Rudy hands the (likely illegally ) copied hard drive over to the NY Post. Even if you believe their story, the shop owner likely broke some laws by copying and handing over PII to NY Post. But I am personally more inclined to believe that either the laptop was planted by someone, or that shop owner (who is an avid Trump supporter) was in on the ruse, and that the laptop/source material was not accidentally left by Hunter. [1] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/15/1986703/-Dezinformatsiya-Rudy-Giuliani-and-Rupert-Murdoch-are-trying-to-con-America-and-failing https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/15/1986703/-Dezinfo...
- seppin 6y ago
  Hunter Biden's iCloud backup was hacked, which isn't too hard. Combine those real photos with some real (and some fake) emails the GRU hacked from Burisma last year, you have a ready-made "October surprise". The degree in which you "fall for it" is the degree in which you want to see Trump reelected. No one that could fog a mirror would normally believe such nonsense.
  - m0zg 6y ago
    The FBI had Hunter Biden's laptop (or really repair shop owner's, since he didn't pick it up or pay the $85 repair bill) since December of last year. This should be fairly easy to corroborate. That's why we aren't hearing on-the-record denials. There's a lot more where that came from, and it's likely real.
    - 6y ago
boomboomsubban 6y ago
Wouldn't it classify as hacking if the data had any encryption? Bypassing encryption to reach copyrighted media would be a DMCA violation if nothing else. No clue if any encryption was used though, and either way the doxxing restriction could stop it.
- scarmig 6y ago
  OSX has had FileVault enabled by default since 2014, though we don't know how old the laptop in question actually is.
- blackflame7000 6y ago
  It's not hacking to decrypt your own data. The argument is, and the precedent set by law supports, that failure to pay for and retrieve the device after a set period of time transfers ownership. It's basically the legal grounds of "finders keepers"
  - scarmig 6y ago
    People keep asserting that ownership of the data passed to the shop owner, but it's not at all clear that's the case. 1) Assuming Biden did bring and abandon the laptop, what do state laws generally say about data ownership? What does Delaware law say about it? 2) We can't assume it was Biden who brought the laptop. Suppose it was stolen: naively, I'd guess ownership can't pass to the store owner, because the person who brought it didn't own it in the first place. But who knows: IANAL. What if the laptop was legitimately owned by someone not Biden, but they stole Biden's data and moved it to the laptop before abandoning it? 3) Again naively, it appears that the shop owner definitely and Giuliani potentially distributed intimate videos of Hunter Biden without his consent. That would seem to run afoul of revenge porn laws, which are on the books in both Delaware (as of 2014) and New York (as of July 2019). I don't know if the blanket assertions you're making are accurate or useful. At the very least, they need to be fleshed out, and there's way too little information available right now to say conclusively that the owner of the shop broke no laws.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
seppin 6y ago
> The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. The data is theirs to do with as they please and they chose to publish it (at least, that's the story). No hacking necessary. The "repair shop" is almost certainly a poorly-convinced backstory as to the origin of the hacked materials. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-intelligence-analysts-hacked-burisma-emails-russia-october-surprise-2020-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-intelligence-analysts-hac... But you are right in saying that hasn't been confirmed yet.

sangnoir 6y ago

> The data is theirs to do with as they please. No hacking necessary. I'd love to see the jurisprudence on this. If there are any photos, do they also get the copyrights? Can they share any nudes they find? How about that Adobe license? As a non-lawyer, it is clear that owning the medium doesn't mean you own the information on it (or the cloud wouldn't be a thing). If we agree on that, then logically, it is possible to exfiltrate information that does not belong to you without authorization, which I think can be called "hacking".

CivBase 6y ago
Ownership of data is not the same as ownership of publication rights. However, the pictures and emails in question were clearly not copyrighted or licensed. If transferring ownership of a physical data storage device does not constitute transferring ownership of the data stored therein, then I don't know what does. When it comes to the cloud, that sounds more to me like leasing storage rights, but I'm no lawyer.
- nkurz 6y ago
  However, the pictures and emails in question were clearly not copyrighted or licensed. I think you misunderstand US copyright law. With few exceptions, almost all pictures and emails are copyright by whoever took the picture or wrote the email. Is there some reason that these would not qualify?
  - CivBase 6y ago
    > I think you misunderstand US copyright law. I probably do. This is the first I've heard of that. Regardless, the NY Post article in question did not publish any of the pictures and I doubt the same copyright law applies to emails.
    - philipkglass 6y ago
      It looks like copyright does apply to the vast majority of emails based on the text of applicable laws. "Northeastern University Law Review: Do Not Forward: Why Passing Along an Email May Constitute Copyright Infringement" http://nulawreview.org/extralegalrecent/do-not-forward-why-passing-along-an-email-may-constitute-copyright-infringement http://nulawreview.org/extralegalrecent/do-not-forward-why-p... However, the issue has not been well tested in courts. The piece ends by saying "Congress should act to clarify whether and when forwarding an email infringes the author’s reproduction right in the work."
      - mrkstu 6y ago
        Since when has any news outlet considered copyright when publishing information of public interest? That is core fair use.
      - leereeves 6y ago
        If copyright applied in cases like this, any politician who said or wrote something embarrassing could block reporting it.
        philipkglass 6y ago
        Usually the embarrassing information is published before the embarrassed party is aware that their dirty laundry is about to go public. Once the information is out there, a copyright infringement suit is usually an irrelevant or losing move for managing the politician's image. I would rate this story worse for Biden if he filed a copyright infringement suit against the computer repair guy or the Post, for example. Using copyright could prevail legally yet lose in the more politically important court of public opinion.
  - panny 6y ago
    >Is there some reason that these would not qualify? I believe excerpts of pictures or emails taken for news reporting qualifies as fair use. It's not like they showed the whole picture, they just cropped his face with the crack pipe in his mouth. Likewise, the full emails where they discuss illegally peddling influence and pay for play with all the headers wasn't published. Just select emails with enough metadata to give context. Copyright doesn't supersede the first amendment right of free press. At worst, the NYPost is on the hook for $150,000 per violation. They can probably make that much and then some on the scoop. It may be worth it to them, even if they lose on a fair use argument. It's a huge scoop in October of an election year.
    - nkurz 6y ago
      All true, in my not-a-lawyer opinion. The important addition is that "fair use" is a defense that allows the use of copyrighted material in certain circumstances. Like a book review that includes an excerpt from a novel, the underlying material is still protected by copyright. It doesn't mean the material is "not copyrighted"---the whole reason fair use applies is because it is protected by copyright. Practically all emails and photos that contain any element of originality are protected by copyright.
- zaroth 6y ago
  US news publishers are not prohibited from publishing copyrighted information for the purpose of making the news. That’s part of the First Amendment. Whether the repair shop owner had copyright to the content is totally irrelevant. He had legal possession of the drive, and handed it to a journalist who found something newsworthy on it. Almost every single major story every told in modern history will contain essentially the same type of information transfer, and it is not illegal for the journalist to use this information or publish it if it’s newsworthy. Sometimes a source can go to jail for sharing the information. But almost certainly that won’t happen in this case, because there is no evidence that the repair shop owner did anything wrong. In fact, he was the one who called the FBI!
  - nobody9999 6y ago
    >Whether the repair shop owner had copyright to the content is totally irrelevant. He had legal possession of the drive, and handed it to a journalist who found something newsworthy on it. No. He handed it to a lawyer working for the President of the US' personal lawyer (Rudy Guiliani), not a journalist. Guiliani handed it to the NY Post and then worked with them.
ummonk 6y ago
The nudes isn't even hypothetical - reportedly the data included intimate videos.
boogies 6y ago
So is all piracy hacking?
- throwawaygh 6y ago
  S/hacking/violation of CFAA or similar state statute. Hacking is often used as a shortcut for “computer crime”.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    Should Twitter ban all copyright-infringing images by saying they violate a rule against "hacking"? Almost all memes are copyright-infringing.
    - throwawaygh 6y ago
      ...no? I was just clarifying what was meant by hacking.
      - Thorrez 6y ago
        I was more asking about what Twitter's view is. If they consider copyright violation to be hacking, and they have a rule against hacking, do they ban all copyright violation with that rule. Considering copyright violation to be hacking seems pretty out there to me, and I haven't seen clear evidence that Twitter actually holds that point of view.
om2 6y ago
Copyright violation is not hacking.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  I made no such argument - I was establishing rules around ownership of information when the medium belongs to someone else, seeing that you cannot hack your own information (gp's argument)

nobody9999 6y ago

>How does this constitute hacking? IIUC, the idea is that the whole thing was a setup from start to finish: 1. Burisma emails were hacked; 2. Hunter Biden's iCloud account was hacked; 3. They bought a Mac, dumped a bunch of the hacked photos, along with some real hacked emails and some forged ones; 4. Sent someone over to the computer shop with the frame up on the laptop already in place; 5. Either the store owner was complicit from the beginning, or they just used him as a dupe. The above may or may not be true. But again, IIUC that's the line that Twitter is taking. If that's what Twitter believe (or can credibly claim to believe), then they're executing the policies in their TOS. I'm not saying it's true, and I'm not saying it ain't. That's just my understanding of Twitter's stand on this.

SaintGhurka 6y ago
That seems like an extraordinarily risky undertaking. You would certainly be found out and face real consequences. Remember the guy got the FBI involved, which would make the whole operation a federal crime.
- javagram 6y ago
  Look up the Skripal poisoning. Russian agents have operated in NATO countries before to do stuff like this. That said, the “hack” theory is pretty weak, I believe it mainly relies on a coincidence that Burisma was hacked last year https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hackers-burisma-ukraine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/russian-hacke... However, the computer shop guy claims the laptop was dropped off in early 2019 and this article says the Russians hacked Burisma in November 2019. The email PDFs themselves provided by the NY Post are dated September 2019, so stuff doesn’t add up here.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- qqqwerty 6y ago
  There is no shortage of Republican operatives that will risk jail time to further their cause. See [1] for example. And regarding the FBI, they were hoping that the FBI would open some sort of investigation, which would give the issue much more credibility. But that failed, so plan b was to just hand it over to NY Post. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-burkman-michigan-robocall-voter-intimidation-felony-charges https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/1/21497823/jacob-wohl-jack-...

Robotbeat 6y ago

That isn’t a credible argument. Why would Hunter Biden, whose dad is running for President, leave his laptop at a Trump-supporting discount computer repair shop without paying with (supposedly) incriminating emails on it? It’s so convoluted... it only makes sense if you wanted to fabricate cover for illegally hacking someone’s data (or more likely, modified and/or falsified data) and releasing it. As it is, the computer repair shop doesn’t own copyright of the PII and has no right to release it.

souprock 6y ago
He's left valuable stuff before. He left his wallet and a crack pipe in a rental car that he returned. Some people are just forgetful. Aside from the leak, it's also not the loss that it would be for most of us. He's rich. He had some sort of iCloud backup thing (sorry not a Mac user) to restore all the data, so he wasn't missing anything. Picking up an old laptop wouldn't be worthwhile if a replacement arrived before the old one was repaired.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  The loss is that he left (supposedly) incriminating data on a laptop. That is incredibly valuable no matter how rich he supposedly is. It's just not a credible argument. (And again, note that the repair shop owner never saw who dropped off the laptop. He just inferred it was Hunter Biden because there was apparently a Beau Biden sticker on the laptop.)
  - tlear 6y ago
    Have you ever interacted over a period of time with a crack addict? Crackhead does not think the same way or act in any sort of reasonable manner. Well sometimes they do and then next day they break into a house crack a woman on the head killing her and get put into prison. While having enough money in the bank to stay high for years. It does not make sense but that is what one former classmate of mine did. None of it surprising in any way.
  - boogies 6y ago

rch 6y ago

Not following the details of the story, but has anyone suggested that Hunter dropped off the laptop himself? Stealing a laptop and causing a bit of damage to initiate a costly repair, then leaving it with a shop under an assumed name seems like a solid Mitnick-level hack to me.

remarkEon 6y ago
I think the most likely scenario is that he went on a bender (he has well known substance abuse problems) and locked himself out, dropped it off to get it fixed, and forgot about it. This seems much more plausible than some of the other extremely complex theories which assume that, ahem, Rudy Gulianni (of all people) was able to plan a years long scam to procure this particular computer.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  Is there any evidence the computer is legit? The only indisputable thing is the photos right? And those could have been hacked from anywhere. Or am I missing something? (I haven’t studied it much)
  - 6nf 6y ago
    There's lots of stuff on there that only Hunter would know. It's legit.
- seppin 6y ago
  Or, none of the leaked data came from the "computer" in question. Hunter's iCloud backup was hacked, Burisma's internal emails were breached by the GRU last year. Combine those two sources, mix real correspondences with some forgeries, and blame it all on a single laptop a MAGA supporter happened upon in rural Delaware. Makes perfect sense, if you want it to.
  - remarkEon 6y ago
    Yeah, sure, certainly plausible. But that's a lot more complicated than a guy who has a substance abuse problem doing things with his computer that a guy with a substance abuse problem would probably do (btw Hunter is sober now, I think).

qqqwerty 6y ago

Here is a good explanation of what likely happened[1]. The laptop shows up at this repair shop in early 2019, and the shop owner "declared that because he is legally blind, he could not identify the person who brought it in". Supposedly, this blind shop owner then gains access to the computer (doesn't say how, was it unprotected?) and it contains lewd videos of Hunter (again, blind shop owner). So he copies the drive (which is likely illegal in Delaware) and then he reached out to the FBI, or the FBI reached out to him, or someone else reached out to the shop owner (i.e. Rudy) and told him to reach out to the FBI. We don't really know because they can't get their story straight on that one. Months later, and the FBI still hasn't announced an investigation, so they go to Plan B and Rudy hands the (likely illegally ) copied hard drive over to the NY Post. Even if you believe their story, the shop owner likely broke some laws by copying and handing over PII to NY Post. But I am personally more inclined to believe that either the laptop was planted by someone, or that shop owner (who is an avid Trump supporter) was in on the ruse, and that the laptop/source material was not accidentally left by Hunter. [1] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/15/1986703/-Dezinformatsiya-Rudy-Giuliani-and-Rupert-Murdoch-are-trying-to-con-America-and-failing https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/10/15/1986703/-Dezinfo...

seppin 6y ago
Hunter Biden's iCloud backup was hacked, which isn't too hard. Combine those real photos with some real (and some fake) emails the GRU hacked from Burisma last year, you have a ready-made "October surprise". The degree in which you "fall for it" is the degree in which you want to see Trump reelected. No one that could fog a mirror would normally believe such nonsense.
- m0zg 6y ago
  The FBI had Hunter Biden's laptop (or really repair shop owner's, since he didn't pick it up or pay the $85 repair bill) since December of last year. This should be fairly easy to corroborate. That's why we aren't hearing on-the-record denials. There's a lot more where that came from, and it's likely real.
  - 6y ago

boomboomsubban 6y ago

Wouldn't it classify as hacking if the data had any encryption? Bypassing encryption to reach copyrighted media would be a DMCA violation if nothing else. No clue if any encryption was used though, and either way the doxxing restriction could stop it.

scarmig 6y ago
OSX has had FileVault enabled by default since 2014, though we don't know how old the laptop in question actually is.
blackflame7000 6y ago
It's not hacking to decrypt your own data. The argument is, and the precedent set by law supports, that failure to pay for and retrieve the device after a set period of time transfers ownership. It's basically the legal grounds of "finders keepers"
- scarmig 6y ago
  People keep asserting that ownership of the data passed to the shop owner, but it's not at all clear that's the case. 1) Assuming Biden did bring and abandon the laptop, what do state laws generally say about data ownership? What does Delaware law say about it? 2) We can't assume it was Biden who brought the laptop. Suppose it was stolen: naively, I'd guess ownership can't pass to the store owner, because the person who brought it didn't own it in the first place. But who knows: IANAL. What if the laptop was legitimately owned by someone not Biden, but they stole Biden's data and moved it to the laptop before abandoning it? 3) Again naively, it appears that the shop owner definitely and Giuliani potentially distributed intimate videos of Hunter Biden without his consent. That would seem to run afoul of revenge porn laws, which are on the books in both Delaware (as of 2014) and New York (as of July 2019). I don't know if the blanket assertions you're making are accurate or useful. At the very least, they need to be fleshed out, and there's way too little information available right now to say conclusively that the owner of the shop broke no laws.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago

seppin 6y ago

> The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed deviced after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. The data is theirs to do with as they please and they chose to publish it (at least, that's the story). No hacking necessary. The "repair shop" is almost certainly a poorly-convinced backstory as to the origin of the hacked materials. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-intelligence-analysts-hacked-burisma-emails-russia-october-surprise-2020-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-intelligence-analysts-hac... But you are right in saying that hasn't been confirmed yet.