Excellent! An investigative reporter from Fox is bound to find all sorts of incriminating dirt, and share it promptly.

It's local news, so not so much of that O'Reilly bias. Aired at 5pm yesterday, nothing special on the blackberry, random emails and names of low to mid level staffers.

The real question isn't the fact that it got to a reporter, but they sold other phones too (blackberry's) so no one knows who has the same data that this phone did, or if the laptops and pc's they were selling were completely wiped or not

Oops! I am sure that this will end well.

farmthis: Excellent! An investigative reporter from Fox is bound to find all sorts of incriminating dirt, and share it promptly.

Wouldn't grandpa have to have actually USED the device to rack up anything incriminating? My bet is that the only text messages on it are "Welcome to Verizon" or some such.

And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge. Even if you have nothing to hide, never sell off anything that can or might hold any personal information of any kind. Just like you wouldn't sell anyone your credit card if you don't need it anymore, or auction off medical data or a phone number list of personal contacts.

farmthis: Excellent! An investigative reporter from Fox is bound to find all sorts of incriminating dirt, and share it promptly.

No dice.

Wow. I'll bet staffers for the losing, falling-apart, leaking-infighting campaign are really hot! And unemployeed. And tired. And had to return all the fine clothes they wore.

Why [Scary]? The names of political small-timers being on a telephony list doesn't scare me at all. I would have gone with [FAIL].

farmthis: Excellent! An investigative reporter from Fox is bound to find all sorts of incriminating dirt, and share it promptly.

Yeah, wingnut republicans never smear moderate republicans or try to get 'em in trouble, ever.

So... have you heard that McCain has an illegitimate black child?

oh this ought to be good

Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge.

No, people call you silly for wiping hard drives with a 12 gauge when a magnetized screwdriver will do the job. They call you paranoid because you keep your 12 gauge loaded and on a tripwire, pointed at your bedroom door.

You know, it has come to my attention that in the past week or so, I have been hearing nothing about anything but Obama, the banking crisis, the auto industry crisis, the economic crisis in general, Blagojevichovich, and so on. Also, it has come to my attention that I have heard nothing in the past week about Palin.

THANK THE MARTHERFARKING GODS!

/that is all

Occam's Chainsaw: Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge.

No, people call you silly for wiping hard drives with a 12 gauge when a magnetized screwdriver will do the job. They call you paranoid because you keep your 12 gauge loaded and on a tripwire, pointed at your bedroom bathroom door.
FTFY, because everyone knows theres a poop monster gonna get ya one night...poop..
/my cat stinks of poop, it is sitting on my chair back as i type, so please forgive me.
smelly cat, get away!!! what do they feed you during the day?
poop

farmthis: An investigative reporter from Fox

You oxymoran.

The McCain Campaign: Is there anything they can't screw up?

This is bad news... for Obama.

Amazing a campaign this incompetent still only lost by 6% of the popular vote.

No matter which side of the political fence your ideology might lie, you honestly can't say you would be better of with 4 more years of this keystone cop shiat.

FTFA: we found one of the $20 Blackberry phones contained more than 50 phone numbers for people connected with the McCain-Palin campaign

Ha! The joke's on the reporter. They were actually sold one of these:

Occam's Chainsaw: Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge.

No, people call you silly for wiping hard drives with a 12 gauge when a magnetized screwdriver will do the job. They call you paranoid because you keep your 12 gauge loaded and on a tripwire, pointed at your bedroom door.

Magnetized screwdriver? I highly doubt that, unless you're talking about stabbing the platters with it after disassembling the thing.

Recommended way is to drill a few holes clean through (concentrating one where the platters are if you can tell), and stick it in a fire if you can.

Control_this: Amazing a campaign this incompetent still only lost by 6% of the popular vote.

The other guy was black.

Okay... What's up with 10 Blackberries with dead batteries? I've had my HTC running for 2.5 years on the original battery.

Other than that, $20 a piece is pretty good. I could use a newer phone. And they just use the generic mini-USB connection and chargers.

Abner Doon: Occam's Chainsaw: Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge.

No, people call you silly for wiping hard drives with a 12 gauge when a magnetized screwdriver will do the job. They call you paranoid because you keep your 12 gauge loaded and on a tripwire, pointed at your bedroom door.

Magnetized screwdriver? I highly doubt that, unless you're talking about stabbing the platters with it after disassembling the thing.

Recommended way is to drill a few holes clean through (concentrating one where the platters are if you can tell), and stick it in a fire if you can.

What you do is open the HD, run it through a bulk degausser, then powder the media. It's the only way to be sure. Fire might not get the media up to it's curie point.

zalasur: You know, it has come to my attention that in the past week or so, I have been hearing nothing about anything but Obama, the banking crisis, the auto industry crisis, the economic crisis in general, Blagojevichovich, and so on. Also, it has come to my attention that I have heard nothing in the past week about Palin.


Haven't been to the Politics page this week, I see.

Oh, and:

I know this just reinforces the stereotype of what people think of McCain and the campaign, but really, this type of stuff happens every single day all over the world.

The sad fact, is that many, many people / companies / organizations / etc. do not blank their electronics before getting rid of them. Every couple of months or so there is another story in the "news" of how they found personal information on some disposed of hard drive, etc. from some person who donated their computer to a charity, or some business, etc.

In absolute truth, the McCain campaign blackberries are just another incident in a very, very, very long list.

So, again, this is a reminder for everyone: Blank your stuff completely before getting rid of it!!!!

Hey, the Brits leave this kind of info just lying around in public places for free. At least Mac made $20 off the deal.

Obama needs to call that witch doctor and tell him the election's over, take off the curse. Has there ever been a more comical campaign?

remus:

So, again, this is a reminder for everyone: Blank your stuff completely before getting rid of it!!!!

Yeah, ok. Go ahead and try to blank it. Hell, do it to the Department of Defense standards (new window). An electron microscope can still pull the data off.

I personally use a heavy duty magnet on all surfaces of all platters and than grind the surface away. Than I use them for target practice.

Once information is on a hard disk, it there for good. Given enough time and resources, that piece of incriminating evidence will be found

beerbaron: farmthis: Excellent! An investigative reporter from Fox is bound to find all sorts of incriminating dirt, and share it promptly.

Wouldn't grandpa have to have actually USED the device to rack up anything incriminating? My bet is that the only text messages on it are "Welcome to Verizon" or some such.

wouldnt it have had to belong to mccain and not just his campaign for there to be a chance that mccain used that one personally? I do not recall seeing that this particular one was ever linked to mccain personally. It is quite likely that staffers had them to communicate with each other and that there were several from various staffers, its just this particular one made it into a reporters hands.

I agree with the others who have said that the larger issue is the laptops, desktops, and other items that were not wiped, sure this is one thing but there are likely other things that were sold without being wiped. Although that is par for the course in the 1990s at a DRMO auction the feds sold off pallets of harddrives, including ones from within the whitehouse, pentagon and other places that still contained classified data - it was stopped en route to china where they were wiped and allowed to then continue on their way, but it was literally hours before the ship was to leave dock.

beerbaron: farmthis: Excellent! An investigative reporter from Fox is bound to find all sorts of incriminating dirt, and share it promptly.

Wouldn't grandpa have to have actually USED the device to rack up anything incriminating? My bet is that the only text messages on it are "Welcome to Verizon" or some such.

McCain was actually kind of tech-savvy. Just couldn't do much because of his screwed up arms/shoulders. Had his wife type everything for him.

papa_chulo: So, again, this is a reminder for everyone: Blank your stuff completely before getting rid of it!!!!

Yeah, ok. Go ahead and try to blank it. Hell, do it to the Department of Defense standards (new window). An electron microscope can still pull the data off.

I personally use a heavy duty magnet on all surfaces of all platters and than grind the surface away. Than I use them for target practice.

Once information is on a hard disk, it there for good. Given enough time and resources, that piece of incriminating evidence will be found

Yes, and that's why I don't toss my old drives away myself, but, realistically, who is going to go to that trouble just to recover a hard drive off an old computer you buy used? For 99.9% of people, a good basic wipe is sufficient to keep their stuff safe.

If, however, you or your organization might consider your information a "target" of some type, then I'd have to agree with you: fubar the drive or device completely. Nuke it from orbit; it's the only way to be sure.

Abner Doon:
Occam's Chainsaw: Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge.

No, people call you silly for wiping hard drives with a 12 gauge when a magnetized screwdriver will do the job. They call you paranoid because you keep your 12 gauge loaded and on a tripwire, pointed at your bedroom door.

Magnetized screwdriver? I highly doubt that, unless you're talking about stabbing the platters with it after disassembling the thing.

Having lost all my pr0nz to a magnetized screwdriver once... it does kill data, but I'm sure my pr0nz could have been recovered if it was critical to national security. Like, if the President had to fap to stop nuclear missiles from launching.

wildcardjack: Okay... What's up with 10 Blackberries with dead batteries? I've had my HTC running for 2.5 years on the original battery.

Other than that, $20 a piece is pretty good. I could use a newer phone. And they just use the generic mini-USB connection and chargers.

Abner Doon: Occam's Chainsaw: Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge.

No, people call you silly for wiping hard drives with a 12 gauge when a magnetized screwdriver will do the job. They call you paranoid because you keep your 12 gauge loaded and on a tripwire, pointed at your bedroom door.

Magnetized screwdriver? I highly doubt that, unless you're talking about stabbing the platters with it after disassembling the thing.

Recommended way is to drill a few holes clean through (concentrating one where the platters are if you can tell), and stick it in a fire if you can.

What you do is open the HD, run it through a bulk degausser, then powder the media. It's the only way to be sure. Fire might not get the media up to it's curie point.

ProTip: Old hard drive magnets make for great refrigerator magnets.

//I use one of those magnesium fire starters on the disks themselves.

So what?

You guys are going through an awful lot of trouble to destroy old storage media. Hard drives, zip disks, cd's, USB sticks... Just write "Rosie O'Donnell Porn" on it with magic marker. I personally guarantee you noone will ever scan it to verify.

wildancrazy159: Occam's Chainsaw: Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge.

No, people call you silly for wiping hard drives with a 12 gauge when a magnetized screwdriver will do the job. They call you paranoid because you keep your 12 gauge loaded and on a tripwire, pointed at your bedroom bathroom door.
FTFY, because everyone knows theres a poop monster gonna get ya one night...poop..
/my cat stinks of poop, it is sitting on my chair back as i type, so please forgive me.
smelly cat, get away!!! what do they feed you during the day?
poop

The obvious solution, of course, is to point a 12-gauge at the cat.

Click Click BOOM

remus
I know this just reinforces the stereotype of what people think of McCain and the campaign,

A lot of these so called stereotypes grew out of the behavior of the people involved. They had bad handlers and they ended up embarrassing themselves.

but really, this type of stuff happens every single day all over the world.

There are people all over the place who refuse to grasp technology, they want it but they don't want to take any kind of ownership of it. In short, they have a real entitlement problem. This is how incidents like this happen and yes they deserve to be made fun of. Don't turn your computer, cell phone or any other information processing device over to your "assistant" because if you do, you deserve what you get.

tjfly: (beating a dead horse)

I'm pretty sure that was rotoscoped from Office Space, and that the horse was originally a printer. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Wait, you can get a used Blackberry for $20? No wonder the economy is in the crapper. These government idiots are just bad with money... and obviously bad with keeping sensitive data secure.

So in the course of McCain inventing the Blackberry, he never actually learned how to delete stuff from it?

boobsrgood: Obama needs to call that witch doctor and tell him the election's over, take off the curse. Has there ever been a more comical campaign?

/Yeah... Al "Stuart Smalley" Franken

This crew of incompetents wanted to run the country. Shudder.

Killdisk and smashing platters seems to work pretty good. Or sitting them on a guitar amp speaker.

klparrot: tjfly: (beating a dead horse)

I'm pretty sure that was rotoscoped from Office Space, and that the horse was originally a printer. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Confirm

klparrot: tjfly: (beating a dead horse)

I'm pretty sure that was rotoscoped from Office Space, and that the horse was originally a printer. Can anyone confirm/deny?

No shiat sherlock.

Vern: And people call me paranoid because I always wipe my previous hard drives using a 12-gauge. Even if you have nothing to hide, never sell off anything that can or might hold any personal information of any kind. Just like you wouldn't sell anyone your credit card if you don't need it anymore, or auction off medical data or a phone number list of personal contacts.

A 5 pound seldgehammer works nicely as well.

Hard drive recycling:
FDISK remove all partitions
Use Windows Millennium to format the hard drive FAT32 despite being larger than 40Gb.
Quit install after format.
Scandisk for bad blocks
Install XP delete previous partition...NTFS full format.

Viola! Free hard drive!

I think it's more interesting that the mccain campaign is selling their used computer equipment, while the Obama campaign donated theirs to schools.

jayessell: Hard drive recycling:
FDISK remove all partitions
Use Windows Millennium to format the hard drive FAT32 despite being larger than 40Gb.
Quit install after format.
Scandisk for bad blocks
Install XP delete previous partition...NTFS full format.

Viola! Free hard drive!

That makes absolutely no sense. Why not just do multipass writes on the disk?

mephyt:

Why not just do multipass writes on the disk?

PoopStain: We contract our BlackBerry service for mail through a parent company, although the actual service is through any cell provider (Verizon, SucksPrint, T-Mobile, AT&T).

The BlackBerry server we connect to can send a kill signal, and it has killed a many lost phone. It wipes them, too.

Sounds like the McCain people didn't get their shiat in order before getting rid of their old phones.


Kill signal only works when a. The phone is on and b. they idiots let you know to kill it before they kill the cell service.

This is what makes whole device encryption a nice feature.

Most likely, like most companies, the campaign viewed that IT is just a farking albatross that is sucking down valuable dollars that can spent doing other things. I would wager their IT folks were some of the first to go. Now they will biatch and moan that data was not secure. Fark em.