Reading Mitnicks book I sometimes get the impression that the he is making up half of it.
[1] Available DRM-free at Downpour (https://www.downpour.com/ghost-in-the-wires?sp=19991) and at Libro.fm (https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781483067216-ghost-in-the-wires)
Big moments I remember from his book.
1. Gaining access to a telco C/O and social engineering his way out after being caught
2. Ultimately being caught by sloppy practices himself, logging into systems he was comfortable with and getting traced, and then forgetting some sort of identification in a ski jacket he hadn’t used in a long time, which was in his closet in a place he was living under a new identity.
It’s been awhile so I could be partly off on those details. But I’d say at least those pieces are very believable.
In many cases, a partial public document is better than no public document.
Plus, there's little way of knowing for the documents for which we haven't seen the uncensored version if they aren't just censoring arbitrary things.
It may be reality, but it's still pretty bad for any government that pretends to value transparency.
It's also extremely offensive to see the names of AUSA's (Assistant US Attourneys) and SA's (FBI Special Agents) redacted. They had personal involvement in this case so I genuinely don't understand why their names cannot or should not be a part of this document. They're public figures in a public role.
"Called -------- on July 1st, 1983 to get access to a router"
Is much better than
"----------------------------------------------------------"
The reason is GP doesn't understand the reason, so there is no reason, so it must be made public. /s
Anyway, each redaction has a usually-legible Exemption code next to it that tells you why it's redacted. You can find out what those are here:
https://foia.wiki/wiki/Exemptions
For example, you see 7c/b7c in the document a lot:
"could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy"
To: [recipient name]
From: [sender name]
Date: [date]
[Multiple paragraphs of redacted text]
...and that was basically it. It was funny, but frustrating (funstrating?).
That means records cannot be automatically declassified after N years because the effort to redact every document created N years ago would be extreme.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090317050834/http://www.themem...
Now I’m wondering how many other people in this thread don’t know he died (pancreatic cancer). 59 isn’t that old. And he was expecting a baby at the time, which suggests maybe they didnt think so either.
SSNs make terrible secrets and it's insane that you could harm a live person by knowing their SSN. I doubt that insanity stops just because you're dead.
The entire redacting seems just so superficial
I wonder if anyone did that back in the day. Not sure how much the telco would have appreciated it ...
Back in that time, I think a good rate was $0.01/minute for a local call on a consumer landline. Unlimited calling plans came later. Not attributing any intent to the telco, just saying, there would be no cost issue to motivate an investigation.
"The image quality contained within this site is subject to the condition of the original documents and original scanning efforts."
Hope that helps! :)
