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I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015)
- dang 5y agoOne past thread: How I got an FBI record at age 11 from dabbling in cryptography (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229412 - April 2017 (133 comments)
- ada1981 5y agoAnyone else hear Dick Tracey’s voice for the “They are your son's alright” part?
- Bootvis 5y agoFun story but the fact that he totally lost touch with his childhood friend over something so silly makes me sad.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoIt makes me even more sad that we haven't remedied that sort of thing everywhere by giving children rights, including free association with others. In other words, parents cannot govern friends and romantic partners.
- amatecha 5y agoThere's definitely a balance to be had... Kids don't generally have those rights because they have far too little life experience to judge the effects of associating with people. Adults have seen the life paths of those around them and observed where certain directions can lead. So, parents look out for their kids. Sometimes the parents just have poor judgement, heh
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoAdults have seen the life paths of those around them and observed where certain directions can lead. So, parents look out for their kids. Sometimes the parents just have poor judgement, heh That last bit is the issue. DO you really think a racist parent is going to allow a child to date somone that looks different - or a devout catholic is realistically going to allow their child to enter a same-sex relationship?
- wkearney99 5y agoIgnoring, of course, the number of kids that DO just that, quite possibly BECAUSE of the parental idiocy.
- rPlayer6554 5y agoSo would you be alright with your son/daughter choosing their romantic partner as a 50 yr old pedophile, drug dealer, and/or avid supporter of whichever religion or cause you find the most perverse and destructive to humanity?
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoObviously, no one should be OK with their child dating someone that is a pedophile. That is obviously child abuse, and call the authorities. I*m not about to let a child be abused, and I find this particular question a strange place to go, since it does seem to be a slippery slope argument. The only real way a parent would know if someone is a drug dealer is if the parent does drugs, or if their friends have bought or sold to the child. Otherwise, I'm just being judgemental or listening to gossip. If i have suspicions that my child can get in trouble with them, the proper thing to do is to have a discussion with the child. After that, it is their decision. I don't realistically find any one religion to be that, in general, but again, if it concerns you, talk to your child about your concerns and hope that you aren't being xenophobic instead of reasonable. Same thing with racism: Chances are, you'll just drive a wedge between you and your child.
- rPlayer6554 5y agoFor the first part your statement was > parents cannot govern friends and romantic partners. With absolutely no qualifiers. Unfortunately there are pro-pedophilia people out there, and some are quite public about it (for instance, Richard Stallman at one point). So I think it's important if you take that stance you clarify. For the second part let's say that there is no question about it (maybe they were convicted). What if they are a violent person? Are you willing to let your child potentially harm themselves or others by being in the influence of violent people? Lastly you misunderstood what I was saying. From your comment I assume you are against xenophobia and racism (rightly so). What if your child wanted to spend time with another child who openly hated black people or Jewish people? What I'm saying is as a parent you do have a duty to take care of your child. You should prevent them from being hurt and hurting others. You need to instill in them moral values that make them a good person. If you do not have any power to say, prevent them from spending time with soemone who openly hurts them, then they aren't going to listen to you. They have to learn some things through experience, but other things would hurt them on such a great level that it could be permanently damaging. Yea they might not like it, but when you are a child you don't always have the mental capacity or experience to make all of these decisions logically. True love for someone is not always pretty, it sometimes involves telling them "no" to protect them.
- nostrademons 5y agoRuns into the same problem the majority of people have in capitalist democracies: rights are tied to economic ability. Kids are usually economically tied to their parents, so if a parent decides "Wups, gotta take a new job across the country" or even "I'm sorry, I don't have time to drive you there." (As a side note - dumb parents tell their kids "No, you can't be friends with ...." Smart parents ensure their kids will never meet ... before their kids are even born, through zoning laws and buying a home in a good neighborhood. I wonder if housing policy advocates realize how much of housing policy is driven by ensuring that your kids associate with "the right" sort of people.)
- bityard 5y agoAre you a parent?
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoIt doesn't matter whether or not I am. IF you agree, you do, and if not, you don't. I know some places have children's rights, which include freedom of association, especially as children get older. (Norway, for instance).
- dotnet00 5y agoNot a parent then lol Also, freedom of association doesn't refer to who a child can befriend or date. It refers to their ability to participate in causes that affect them, such as volunteering with NGOs. What you're proposing is extreme by even Norway's standards.
- UncleSlacky 5y agoReminder that the US is the only country not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._ratification_of_the_Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._ratification_of_the_Conve...
- belval 5y agoThis story (assuming it's true) should serve as an excellent example of why you need privacy even if you think that you don't. In peace time the NSA is only looking for "terrorist" and leaves everyone alone, but in case of war they would start creating lists for any and everything. All it takes is one "tough" agent trusting their gut feeling/algorithm based on your browsing history and shopping habits to put a target on your back and you are done. EDIT: Replacing "if there's any truth to it" by "assuming it's true". I did not mean to imply that the author made up the whole story and thought both expressions were equivalent.
- meowface 5y agoVery good point. Everything is framed under the status quo. If shit hits the fan, all those assumptions immediately fly out the window. If the writ of habeas corpus is suspended, NSA instantly transforms from shady to Stasi.
- sam0x17 5y agoCombined with a continual state of "war on terror" and a post-conventional-warfare world, this time is basically all the time anyway.
- not2b 5y agoThe "if there is any truth to it" remark was unnecessary. The author was very well known on the net when it was a much smaller place (the old Usenet days), and implying that he made it up is, to say the least, impolite. His Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Earnest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Earnest
- c0nsumer 5y agoBe sure to read the follow-up (https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/cyclops/bash1.htm https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/cyclops/bash1.htm) about the challenges the author faced in trying to help move forward a reasonably safe standard for bicycle helmets.
- dahart 5y agoYeah, came to say the same. The multi-part saga of helmet safety is fascinating history, and enlightening to hear the story of the people who were fighting this fight for so long. I’m bookmarking this!
- errcorrectcode 5y agoIf bicycle helmets were essential for causal-speed, safe path, everyday bicycling, the Dutch would use them. Interesting fact: in the US, riders without helmets receive more average buffer space from road vehicles than those with. If you're downhill mountain biking, wear a proper helmet. If you're racing in Manhattan, wear an equally suitable helmet. If you're leisurely riding on a wide, empty side road in a residential area and cycle often, it may lend more placebo overconfidence to the rider than it confers necessary protection. It seems like gearing-up in knee and elbow pads to go for a simple walk.
- c0nsumer 5y agoI'm sorry, but what you're saying has nothing to do with what I linked to. The linked article is about the development of helmet safety standards and their use in bicycle racing. Please read the linked article, you may find it interesting.
- emteycz 5y agoThose Dutch who don't wear helmets do it because they're idiots, it's as simple as that. Any fall - even if you're standing with your legs on the ground - on a bike can break your skull. You try to avoid a dog or a ball and pull the front brake instead of both - boom broken skull. It's just plain dumb.
- waiseristy 5y ago
- oliv__ 5y agoI agree you should be able to do that without consequences but there's nothing brave about pulling down an American flag and stepping on it.
- waiseristy 5y agoIn many time periods in this countries short history, you would be dead wrong. But, I was more pointing to the bravery of these FBI agents, investigating this horrendous crime
- gs17 5y agoAssuming the flag wasn't your property (and that you weren't a four year old like in the story), you probably shouldn't be allowed to do it, but it should be at most a minor vandalism case for local police, not the FBI.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- wheybags 5y agoIn Afghanistan? Maybe not. In the USA? That could be something very brave indeed. (Rabid patriots please recall brave does not mean good nor bad)
- mangokamikaze 5y ago
- ajross 5y agoSo... the headline invokes an inappropriate image. The author attracted the attention of the FBI in 1942, when "cryptography" meant wartime codebreaking, and his amateur cypher got lost and then found and turned in by a genuinely concerned citizen. I mean, OK. Sure, it's bad that kids interested in math get caught up in this. But come on, it was the middle of the biggest war in history and real spies were indeed doing real work with codes like that. This says nothing about modern enforcement regimes, nor should it.
- vkou 5y agoThis is the important take-away, here. If he were dabbling with radios at the age of 11, in 1942, he'd have ran into the same kinds of problems. Hell, simply being of the wrong ethnicity was more than enough to dump a world of problems on your head in that time period. 120,000 people were sent to internment camps for doing literally nothing, and we're wringing hands over a kid getting a house call from the FBI.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoHell, simply being of the wrong ethnicity was more than enough to dump a world of problems on your head in that time period. 120,000 people were sent to internment camps for doing literally nothing, and we're wringing hands over a kid getting a house call from the FBI. Actually, wring hands at both things. The camps were atrocities, even if they didn't match quite the enemies' atrocities. But they were also doing this sort of thing to many different sorts of folks.
- vkou 5y agoOn the scale of hand-wringing, this doesn't even register. Nothing bad happened to him. The police looked into it, decided this was probably not an issue, filed it, and moved on. No laws were broken. No procedures were violated. Nobody's fundamental human rights were curtailed. The procedures or laws in place weren't unfair or excessive. This isn't the Rosa Parks, or the Rodney King, or the George Floyd of police abuse. This isn't the springboard for broad, or even narrow reform. This is the system working. I understand that a tinkerer may feel offended by the fact that the police even looked into this in the middle of a world war[1], but if that's the poster child of your problems with the police, you are in a staggeringly privileged position, compared to on-going, actual problems, affecting millions of people every year (outside of the context of, well, a world war.) [1] That was in large part won by intelligence and counter-intelligence.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoLesson learned: "We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area." - if you want your possessions found, you can either attach a note with your home address or an AirTag... or simply something _so_ sketchy that an intelligence agency delivers your stuff together with an awesome story.
- 0cVlTeIATBs 5y agoA gangster was in prison, when he received a letter from his mother. "We miss you very much, and it will be hard for your father to till the garden without you." "Don't do that, that's where I buried the guns!" he wrote back. A while later he received another note: "Some men from the prison completely dug up our garden looking for those guns, but they didn't find anything." "I know, mama. It was the least I could do for you."
- partiallypro 5y agoHow does one find out that you have an FBI record?
- tyingq 5y agoThere's this: https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/identity-history-summary-checks https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/identity-history-summary-c... An FOIA request would probably be more comprehensive, though also more work.
- easrng 5y agoI assume the easiest way is to do something that would cause you to get one.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoYou probably don't find out unless you've been visited by the FBI. Once you are visited, though, you can be pretty certain that you do.
- dylan604 5y agoYou can have an FBI file and never meet anyone working for the FBI. Similar to how you can have a FB profile while never joining FB.
- vmception 5y agoProtip: an FBI record means nothing and you can check if you have one too! There is a gov site somewhere maybe someone else knows the url
- herbst 5y agoIs there something like that for foreigners from the NSA CIA WhateverA too?
- smolder 5y agoThey have records on you if you exist, and probably if you don't, too.
- herbst 5y agoIn other words. Assuming I spend lot of my youth with cryptography, tor, basically gray area things. I realize they may have a record on me, but is there any way to know if it is safe for me to ever enter the country without them making a huge deal out of it? I wouldn't ask wouldn't I know people personally who had extended weird discussions for hours before they could enter the country.
- Someone1234 5y agoI assume this one: https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/identity-history-summary-checks https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/identity-history-summary-c... But it isn't clear to me if this would provide the kind of information presented in the article (e.g. if you've been simply investigated for a suspected crime). > listing certain information taken from fingerprint submissions kept by the FBI and related to arrests and, in some instances, federal employment, naturalization, or military service.
- anonymousiam 5y agoThis story contains a link to another of his stories (also published in Communications of the ACM, February 1989). Old as it is, it seems quite relevant in our current race-obsessed culture: https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/les/mongrel.htm
- BizarroLand 5y agoYeah, I read that. I wonder if in another 75 years we'll have become as much more enlightened about race as we did from the 1950's to now and look back on some of our present policies and practices with horror and disgust. Seems unlikely, the first 80% of improvement is the easiest and we've got to be somewhere close to that now, but I could be wrong.
- incompatible 5y agoThe systems he described were pretty crazy, confusing race (physical characteristics) and ethnicity (culture). On the other hand, you get that everywhere. I don't even know how to describe my ethnicity. "Generic English-speaking" is my best attempt.
- sudosysgen 5y agoI got a CSIS record at the age of 12 for the same reason. It turned out after someone did a FOIA request that the IRC chatroom I was having some crypto fun in had a CSIS record. Sadly after that a lot of people got spooked and I lost touch with many there. Never got to meet my friend despite living in the same city :(
- tgflynn 5y agoThis title needs to be qualified with "during World War II" or (1942).
- chheplo 5y agoHe was able to tinker with a radio at age of 10, in 1940. I had my first electronic at 19, in 2003, growing up in India. Today, almost anyone in the world can have access to the latest tech easily. Great minds were there and are everywhere in the world, they just didn't have access to resources. Think how fast the research monopoly of US is going to shrink.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoGrowing up in a Third-World country, I was tinkering with electronics at age 10 and built my first crystal radio at age 11 from junk parts. Dumpster-diving isn't hard as long as you don't mind the occasional dead dog.
- amatecha 5y agoI've found entire, functional computers thrown out. My first web server was a 386 built from dumpster-dived parts, quickly upgraded to a 486 as I found new stuff. I still have those computers, too. It's amazing how wasteful people are with tech. People, please don't throw out working computers if you can avoid it. Take them to a thrift shop or a specialized place that will fix them up and sell them, like Free Geek. Post an ad on Craigslist "free" section.
- bitwize 5y agoA year and a half ago, I found an entire HP Elite 8300 standing by the dumpster in the rain. It was only missing a hard disk (likely removed to be shredded). I brought it in, checked it for rust or damage, let it dry for several days, and ordered a hard drive for it. It runs fine, and I use it as a repo/build server.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y agoNice. I have an SGI Indigo that I will probably never be able to use again because I forgot its login credentials years ago. And I think the monitor was proprietary to SGI and I tossed because it took up too much room. Then again, I could probably find a downloadable OS for it somewhere online.
- daveslash 5y agoPrevious Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14229412
- torpid 5y agoMy FBI file was for hacking into my school district's AS/400 that handled my school's attendance and grading system. Somehow using a public IP address with no access restrictions allowed a clear telnet path in from home. Compounding username and passwords that were all the same for every employee. I didn't change a thing, just LOLed and told someone. Bad mistake. This was the late 90s. Oh well, 2 week suspension and kicked off the computers for less than a year. A nice conference with FBI, police, my parents, IT and school administration. Fun times. I learned my lesson to not talk about such things because their egoes were too fragile. When they decided to give students in their website design class ftp accounts on the district wide web/email server running an ancient version of Debian, they didn't disable the shell, just added a login script to a menu for pine, etc. for people who telnetted in, which I'm sure the sysadmin was proud of. However, a few fast CTRL-C's broke out of his script menu loop and got me a shell, and they didn't shadow protect their password files. Ran it through john the ripper and had half the district's e-mail passwords in a default dictionary file including the root pw in a few minutes. LOLed and never told anyone about that. Good times, the 90s....
- namrog84 5y ago> I learned my lesson to not talk about such things I like how you shared how you learned lesson to not share mischievous activities with people in the same post you then go and share more things you haven't been caught for. This is going on your permanent school record! /s That's great. I know even as of recent of 2021 I've seen some places that had 0 security on things.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> I like how you shared how you learned lesson to not share mischievous activities with people in the same post you then go and share more things you haven't been caught for American public schools are quite adept at teaching distrust in authority, particularly in bureaucrats. That doesn't mean distrust in everybody.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
- tester756 5y ago>After we left the form by her front door her parents somehow figured out who had done that and, when Bobby’s and my parents learned of this stunt they decreed that we would no longer play together. We followed that guidance for over 40 years. oh
- _9rq6 5y agoAh, I wanted to hear more of adventures of Les and Bobby.
- bcopa 5y agoKing
- 14 5y agoIt’s sad that people on positions of authority are always paranoid someone is lying. I was recently pulled over and I was sure I hadn’t done anything and it was on a very busy highway through town and I was literally at a side road so turned off and immediately pulled over. It took seconds. The officer as he approached me put his thumb on the back of my car. From my reading they do that to leave their fingerprints if something goes wrong. He approached and said he just wanted to check if I had my license, something they are not supposed to do since it fosters racial profiling they are supposed to have a reason. But he said I noticed you don’t have an N on your car(the N indicated new drivers) and you looked a little young so wanted to check. Just a bullshit story since I am 40, had 2 teenage kids and a 6 year old in my car and enough facial hair to say I was way beyond a 5 o’clock shadow. Then he began to lecture me how when a car pulls onto a side street it makes him very suspicious. I said well I don’t want anyone getting hit from behind and he replied That he is not affraid of getting hit. All very well I am glad you are not but I had 3 kids in the car and have seen enough videos of officers getting plowed and I didn’t want to be part of that. He let me go and with that I am once again annoyed with the police. If I’ve done something ticket me I’ve never omce fought a ticket. I pay my dues. But like I say that rule is to stop racial profiling so I take it seriously.
- smolder 5y agoUnfortunately police in the US are often idiot bullies given a badge. In general you're best off if you never interact with them, including asking for help.
- UncleSlacky 5y agoRelevant video ("Never talk to the police"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
- isuckatcoding 5y agoWhat a wonderful and adventurous life! I really enjoyed reading that. Makes me think about what stories I’ll have to tell about my life in 40-50 years.
- champagnois 5y agoIt makes me wonder -- does everyone end up investigated for their interest in HTTPS and trying to think up encryption methods? It seems even having a passive interest in computer science or cryptocurrency would inevitably lead to one taking a class or buying a book on these topics. The business person in me always brainstorms the various potential business applications of any technology -- and that inevitably leads to a lot of discussion. Any system of policing that results in entire professions and swathes of hobbyists being considered and treated as enemies of the state is essentially the same level of injustice as the witch trials of old and shows our species has not improved all that much.
- not2b 5y agoNot any more, but back in the 1970s and before cryptography was considered the province of the military and spies, not for civilians to mess with, in the US and the UK. State-of-the-art crypto was treated much like tech for nuclear weapons. The pioneers of public key cryptography had to fight for their right to publish.
- champagnois 5y agoI cannot imagine an entry level class in Web Development (or even a coding bootcamp) not dedicating some time to crypto and SSL / SSH. Anyone doing a deepdive on these topics would seemingly be put on a list. It is absurd.
- not2b 5y agoNetscape was required to severely cripple SSL to be allowed to export it in the early 1990s. Since "export" included putting software on an FTP server, this meant no open source crypto software could be on US servers. GNU addressed that problem by hosting some software in Europe. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
- boring_twenties 5y ago
- m4tthumphrey 5y agoOff topic: I'm watching Hackers[0] for the first time tonight and this is on Hacker News. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peBuMWtkw8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peBuMWtkw8s
- herbst 5y agoIsn't it weird for Americans to know that their own secret service is monitoring their kids?
- bityard 5y agoGenerally, the secret service doesn't monitor kids unless they believe that they are somehow a threat to the president. If you read the story, you'd know that the FBI wasn't "monitoring kids", they were investigating an incident that _could_ have had something to do with international espionage, colored significantly by wartime paranoia. They were obviously embarrassed when all of their leads pointed to a kid. However, even today, the FBI doesn't monitor kids. Tech giants and social networks do that for them.
- bink 5y agoWell, maybe not anymore, but the Secret Service used to be charged with investigating computer crimes. I was the victim of one of their covert raids at the Pentagon City mall way back in the early 90s. They dressed up like mall cops and searched us all. It even ended up on the front page of the Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/11/12/hackers-allege-harassment-at-mall/5f5e756f-806e-485e-962b-0a5f71635c81/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/11/12/h...
- localhost 5y agoI liked the old-school vibe of this page, so I decided to view source it. This was written using ... Microsoft Word(!)
- x2dhump 5y agoHe's 88, I'd let it slide.
- dredmorbius 5y ago91
- dekhn 5y agoin case you're not aware, the author of this is a known (but not well-known) AI researchers from way, way back. He invented the "finger" protocol. I chose the university I went to based on the qualitty of the plan files so in some sense, he's the reason I ended up at UCSC.
- kragen 5y agoFinger protocol, port 79: >dekhn[CRLF] <[dekhn's login status, .plan, etc.] <[EOF] HTTP/0.9 protocol, port 80: >GET /~dekhn/[CRLF] <[dekhn's home page, etc.] <[EOF] HTTP was a slightly enhanced finger, so in some sense he's the reason for the web.
- jacquesm 5y agoI never made that connection before, thank you!
- dekhn 5y agoI'm not sure if there is any historical evidence backing that up (IE, Tim Berners-Lee used Finger protocol as an inspiration. A lot of the UNIX protocols of the time were like that (NNTP in particular), simple call/response with textual commands and arguments.
- phkahler 5y ago>> My mother told the investigators how glad she was to get the glasses back, considering that they cost $8. The sourpuss did a slow burn, then said “Lady, this case has cost the government thousands of dollars. It has been the top priority in our office for the last eight weeks. We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area.” He went on to say that they had been interviewing our friends and neighbors for several weeks. Mom: "And how is that foolishness my problem?"
- relaunched 5y agoI love the post. I smiled quite a lot, not only because of the stories themselves, but because of my own childhood tomfoolery, oftentimes including my childhood best friend.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gtsop 5y agoPlease sir max-width: 100%; overflow-x: none; Edit: sorry completely messed up my css <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
- pphysch 5y agoAnyone know what unholy magic generated this page's HTML? Microsoft Word -> "Export to HTML" or something?
- wging 5y agoSeems likely - it starts out like this: <html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:w="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word" xmlns:st1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40"> <head> <meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <meta name=ProgId content=Word.Document> <meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 10"> <meta name=Originator content="Microsoft Word 10">
- nickagliano 5y agoDid anyone else look into his Stanford biography page? Pretty insane stuff. https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/ https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/ http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/bucket/ http://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/bucket/ In a section headed by an anime girl, he claims to have, "figured out when and how a bunch of other fantasies got into our DNA and will shortly post an article on this web site that will explain how that happened, why it is causing modern humans to make billions of bad decisions each day, and how we and our descendants are likely to be wiped out soon unless we begin dealing with this problem in a rational way." Then there's a weird picture of his face, which is how he thinks he'll look in 2043, when "he plans to croak at age 112". On his bucket list page, "My choice as a troublemaker will be to get shot in the back while running away from an jealous husband in May 2043". Very weird stuff.
- empressplay 5y agoThat last bit I think is stolen from Lazarus Long
- scruple 5y agoFound a couple links [0][1] that appear to be follow-ups to that section about fantasies. [0]: https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/earth/fantasy.html https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/earth/fantasy.html [1]: https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/earth/fantasies.html https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/earth/fantasies.html
- KineticLensman 5y agoLet me die a youngman's death not a clean and inbetween the sheets holywater death not a famous-last-words peaceful out of breath death When I'm 73 and in constant good tumour may I be mown down at dawn by a bright red sports car on my way home from an allnight party Or when I'm 91 with silver hair and sitting in a barber's chair may rival gangsters with hamfisted tommyguns burst in and give me a short back and insides Or when I'm 104 and banned from the Cavern may my mistress catching me in bed with her daughter and fearing for her son cut me up into little pieces and throw away every piece but one Let me die a youngman's death not a free from sin tiptoe in candle wax and waning death not a curtains drawn by angels borne 'what a nice way to go' death
- Hackergamer123 5y ago
- aeturnum 5y ago> 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. I never cease to be amused and amazed by the incredible lack of imagination discernment law enforcement personnel display at all levels. I'm sure some smart people work at the three letter agencies, but there sure is a range! To me, I take it as a lesson about the dangers of dogmatic following of rules and how such a system will inevitably provoke people into work that have less than zero desired value. Obviously, as 1984 and many other works remind us, the value is in reinforcing the power of the system - but the official line of the system is to say that's not the case. The reason government agencies are so fond of crushing people who have the bad luck to become centered in their gaze is that they know or suspect they are not clever enough to match wits with a below-average four year old and they would never want that possible fact to become public knowledge.
- Hackergamer123 5y ago
- wildlogic 5y agoFBI file here also for hacking in middle school... later added onto for messing around making tesla coils and mixing up rocket fuel.
- angst_ridden 5y agoA person I know studied in East Germany in the early 80s via a very limited exchange program. After the wall came down, she requested her Stasi file. It was fascinating what was in the file - lots of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. For example, she was upset when the Challenger exploded, and this mystified the Stasi informers who had previously identified her as a pacifist (in their minds, the Shuttle was 100% military). Similarly, she was trying to research what happened to a relative who had remained in Germany in the late 30s, and whether she had died of natural causes or been sent to the camps. The Stasi file was filled with speculations on the details of this "sleeper agent" with whom she was trying to establish contact. All this to say that from the mindset of a spy, everything is spy-craft. Everyone's world-view shapes their interpretation of events and reality itself. Was the shuttle a military venture? Partly. Was it also a tool for science? Yup. But the functionaries who looked at her data in the heat of the cold war certainly couldn't see those distinctions. For what it's worth, she was able to get her Stasi file, but has never been able to get a copy of her FBI file.
- pvg 5y agobut has never been able to get a copy of her FBI file This can be confusing because there are various bewildering options, some of which are slower (or outright ineffective for personal records) than others but getting FBI records is comparatively straightforward once you've navigated the maze. I did it a few years ago and they sent me a CD's worth of stuff, plus a note of things they had not sent me or had redacted with instruction on challenging their decisions on these.
- angst_ridden 5y agoI'm not positive, but I seem to recall she said that she requested files, but just got back a folder of redacted sheets only showing a few dates and her name scattered throughout.
- pvg 5y agoMost people don't have 'FBI files' or they are essentially trivial stuff. A bunch of mine was immigration stuff.
- causi 5y agoI had to have a sit-down with the school admins because I used the "netsend" command to send the letter q, one time, to every PC in the school. I thought it was just going to go to the computers in the computer lab.
- xtracto 5y ago> This was just after local citizens of Japanese descent had been rounded up and taken away to concentration camps, though I was not aware of that at the time. Now that was a piece of history I had never herd about: https://www.britannica.com/event/Japanese-American-internment https://www.britannica.com/event/Japanese-American-internmen... Apparently Mexican concentration camps were not the US first throw at it.
- buserror 5y agoI had the french secret service come and interrogate me in ~88 (bad cop/good cop) because I had doctored a RS232 cable to be NULL modem, to be able to connect to the X25 "transpac" network using a terminal. I was 'drafted' in the army back then, basically unpaid slave labour, and I was risking 40+ days in prison for sabotage. I 'escaped' due to a coupe of forward thinking officers who didn't think that was a way to handle a smart 18yo kid.
- UncleSlacky 5y agoThis podcast might interest you (about how French hackers were forced/drafted to work for the government in the 80s & 90s): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012flt https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0012flt
- spullara 5y agoA friend of mine in 1997 got arrested for poking around in air force computer systems. He was charged with a felony not because he did any damage but because it cost $40k to track him down. He also had to pay that back. https://attrition.org/~jericho/works/security/crime_punishment.html https://attrition.org/~jericho/works/security/crime_punishme... "Once again, when computer crime enters the equation, circumstances seem to change. In May of 1997, Wendell Dingus was sentenced by a federal court to six months of home monitoring for computer crime activity. Among the systems he admitted to attacking were the U.S. Air Force, NASA and Vanderbilt University. What is different about this case is the court's order for Dingus to repay $40,000 in restitution to the Air Force Information Warfare Center (AFIWC) for their time and effort in helping to track him."
- edzillion 5y agoWendell Dingus Can we just take a moment to appreciate that name?
- dc-programmer 5y agoI mean that’s a pretty dumb thing to do with very predictable consequences
- Scoundreller 5y ago> To me, $8 represented 40 round trips to the beach by streetcar, or 80 admission fees to the movies. I guess we can be impressed that round trip municipal public transit is now cheaper than a movie admission fee.
- snvzz 5y agoWait until they learn about people using perfect cryptography (one-time pad).
- phendrenad2 5y agoI'm sure more than half of HN has an FBI profile. I know that from an early age I would do internet searches for everything and anything I found fascinating, including hacking, piracy, anonymous proxies, nuclear energy, wilderness survival, firearms, communism, cults, wikileaks, snowden, assange, and a multitude of conspiracy theories. I grew up fine and have never broken the law. But I sometimes wonder if some computer system or agency sees me differently, just based on keywords.
- bravetraveler 5y agoI've wondered if they've kept tabs on me since I was young/dumb... Back before SSL/TLS became a thing, ARP poisoning was all you really needed to find out some fun details. It was basically pretending you're both the network gateway and a client. This and some poor decisions on my part ended up with an expulsion my senior year, never had a phone call like this - just angry people from the state.
- jolmg 5y ago> At some point the Jack Armstrong program invited listeners to mail in a Wheaties box top to get a decoder ring that could be used to decipher secret messages that would be given near the end of certain broadcasts. I remember seeing that in "A Christmas Story": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_XSShVAnkY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_XSShVAnkY
- errcorrectcode 5y agoSo my database course used a proprietary database hosted on-campus with IP ACLs. I setup a proxy on the campus cluster and mirrored 90% of it before the lecturer turned it off. I don't understand why they would even look, much less care, about policing closed-source documentation like the Stasi. If it happened these days, it would've been an Aaron Swartz situation.
- AlexanderTheGr8 5y agoCan you imagine what will happen when measuring pupil dilation goes mainstream? Any authoritarian govt will be able to measure your true intentions. There is no way to hide your pupil dilation. For example, if you are browsing twitter and see a post of your country "liberating" its enemies. If your pupils and pulse indicate that you don't approve of your country's actions, suddenly you will lose some rights as a citizen. Maybe your house gets raided for "suspicion of terrorism" With AR/VR devices about to go mainstream, this is very possible. Any thoughts?
- thefingerer 5y agoYes: avoid OCULUS headsets and Facebook accounts, for precisely this reason. Trust me: HALF LIFE ALYX ain't worth Zuckerberg getting his fingernails on the inside of your scalp.
- errcorrectcode 5y agoI wonder if gifted and talented programs may also be used to inventory brain capital and feed into algorithmic threat identification, watchlist(s), and/or clandestine services recruiting.
- kmano8 5y agoRan a `netsend` once from the school library. Saw it pop all over everyone's screens, and immediately :homer:'d out of there. Unfortunately don't remember the text I sent.
- sunjester 5y agoI have 2 such FBI records and every time I do a background check for a job they don't know what it's for and neither do I. I wish there was a way I could find out if it was computer related or not.
- chasd00 5y agoIn my college (late 90s) no one cared if you put an interface into promiscuous mode and there was no encryption anywhere. I had so many aim and campus system accounts from packet sniffing I didn’t know where to start. Following aim conversations of people in my dorm was pretty funny though.
- jimt1234 5y agoAround 1983, me and a few friends were into "war dialing". We found a bank, did about a half-day of research (default logins for popular systems used by banks), and were able to get into the system. We all got bored and stopped poking around after a day or so - we were kids, none of us understand anything about banking. But one kid continued to poke around for months, and he was making changes, too - like, creating his own "backdoor" accounts. Well, naturally we all got caught, not because of some technical task force or anything, but rather because the one kid was bragging about it on a bunch of local BBS's. Then he ratted out the rest of us. Keep in mind this was around 1983; it was a different time - "computer crimes" didn't really exist, nor the people to investigate them. And that's basically how we all escaped any significant consequences. I was totally unaware of all this at the time, but it was explained to me later in life (by my mother, who is still bitter about it - sorry, mom; you bought me the Commodore 64! LOL) that the FBI didn't really consider it a crime because nothing was stolen. The local cops proposed "trespassing", but we never stepped foot in the bank; we didn't even know where it was. Thankfully this was just prior to the release of "War Games". Everything changed after that movie. Law enforcement started to pay attention. There were stories about the FBI investigating kids on local BBS's, thinking they were working for the Soviet Union, trying to access military secrets or something like that.
- kingcharles 5y agoI got one after I let someone have an account on my Linux server in the mid-90s and they used it to send a very detailed and specific death threat to president@whitehouse.gov.
- ngneer 5y agoAs long as everyone is sharing stories, it was the late '90s in the bay area when I was in high school and poked around in our computer lab systems. Other than running Quake and Starcraft, which we were not supposed to do, it occured to me to install a keylogger on an NT4 machine that was shared by the students and our admin. After finding a stealthy keylogger, installing it and verifying it worked for capturing my own password, I went home excited and nervous. When I got into the lab the next day, I looked around for some privacy and quickly checked the logs. Imagine my satisfaction when her password fell into my lap. I remember it to this day, it was "dj3j". Those were the days, of short passwords at least. I proceeded to immediately remove the log file and keylogger and never used her password, am a white hat through and through. Hopefully she changed it by now...
- thefingerer 5y agoSo, Les wrote UNIX finger?!? I clearly remember writing 'kiddie scripts' with lists of every computer in the entire school: finger @w20-575-1 finger @w20-575-2 etc. just to see who was logged on everywhere. Even though there was nothing to do with that information.
- dredmorbius 5y agoWhat a refreshingly retro tale of decades ago when advocating use of personal protective equipment was a daring and controversial notion!
- dghughes 5y agoThis gave me a flashback I recall that when I was quite young about age 10 - 13 and I created my own writing system. I think I had read about the Phoenicians and how they made the characters for the alphabet after everyday objects and it inspired me. I recall filling entire notebooks with stories to myself filled with my "language" still English but my writing system.
- insan1d 5y agoI got a cease and desist letter from apple around the same age and see it as an achievement I want to frame in the living room (it was when the iPhone 4S and Siri was released. At the time, there was a way you could get Siri working on a jailbroken phone but required running a Siri server that scrapped keys from Apple’s servers. A lot of people were doing what I did a charging for it, so I made a free and public one. I remember the day my VPS provider sent me an email with Apple’s request to shut it down lol)
- transpute 5y agoUK initiative to regulate computer security professionals, https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/25/ukgov_cybersecurity_profession_regulation_ukcsc/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/25/ukgov_cybersecurity_p... > security specialists could be struck off or barred from working if they don’t meet “competence and ethical requirements.” … people who aren’t UKCSC-registered professionals might not be able to claim any new legal defences … similar to the General Medical Council and its register of doctors allowed to practice medicine in the UK.
- speedbird 5y agoCharming story, but only an American would think 1942 was early in WWII. I’m tempted to roll out the old joke about US foreign policy but I’ll save y’all …
- stevespang 5y ago
- zmix 5y agoThis was a great read! I also love the fact, that this is an old-skool serve via the user's home (~learnest). So much nicer than "You have 2 more Medium articles free this month".
- con 5y agoWas an exchange student at a High School in Michigan (I’m German): Hacked the local school network to access the cafeteria system and changed my friend’s photo to Tux (Linux mascot). Would also have been able to change the credit of each student - but mentioned to the sys-admins which then challenged me to brute force their Admin password. I successfully did that and they offered me an internship. I learned a lot over the half year that I worked with them, switched from Windows to Debian (on a Mac! I wasn’t allowed to be paid, but they gifted me an iBook before I left). While I was there I also setup a cgi (web) proxy on a host in Germany, called it “cproxy” and shared it with friends in the high school. At the end of my year, I think half the school was using it to circumvent the schools accept/reject list for web browsing. I kept it running and two years later my parents received a call from the FBI, that they wanted to have a word with me (I was back in Germany at that point). Supposedly someone used it for fraud on eBay. I remember how I had to tell my teacher in (German) school that I had to keep my cellphone with me because the FBI was about to call :-) Fun times! Really glad that the school in Michigan was so supportive and helped me keep my hacker spirit!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gumby 5y agoWhen I read this headline I figured it was an exaggeration but after it hung around on HM for a while I clicked the link. Oh, it was Les Ernest. Completely plausible.
- totorovirus 5y agoIn early e-commerce era in korea, I remember a website storing refund balance into the browser cookies without verification which I told about it to my friend. My friend told that to his friend, and that one was bold enough to steal million dollar amount of goods using that bug, got eventually caught, however was not accused of anything because it was literally the first case of e-commerce related crime committed by teenager. The officials didn't take it seriously. Good old 00's.
- pregseahorses 5y agoFirst year emigrating to the US, I started a service to automate the laborious College Algebra online homework with WolframAlpha and $20/job Pakistani teens. Had an AdWords campaign running. Calls kept pouring in - majority from Phoenix university students. If you wanted a perfect score, I’d charge you extra. If you wanted an imperfect score, I’d still charge you extra. Life was good, I was naive. I thought I had cracked it. Then I got served. The CEO of the company (one of the biggest educational publishers) was to fly in personally. They thought I ran a huge operation with many departments, since I would routinely change voices and direct customers around departments. Once my lawyers learned the real scale of the operation, they laughed and managed to get all charges dropped. Looking back at it, would I have had a chance, had I approached the company in some defensive role against such activity?
- imdsm 5y agoGood job we don't have the FBI in the UK or I'd have had multiple files
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]